Words like “patriot,” “Constitution,” and “We the People” ae exactly the kind of verbiage neofascists use to give their ideas legitimacy and acceptability. I despise people wrapping themselves up in the flag, and I suspect anyone wallowing in cheap patriotism of demagoguery.

It's not the words I object to, it's how they've been co-opted. It's like some Communist hellhole calling itself the Peoples' Democratic Republic of...etc. There's nothing wrong with people, democracy, or Republics, but I am always suspicious of that kind of pious over-demonstrative and self-conscious patriotism.

But even if American sleazebag right wing groups cloak themselves in this kind of hyper-nationalist verbal masturbation, that does not give even the most enlightened and benign liberal statesman the right to use the power of the tax arm of the state to single them out for punishment.

If I had been an IRS official trying to prioritize my tax investigations, having only limited resources to investigate thoroughly all applicants, I would simply have put all the petitions for special tax status in a blind list, decided how many I could afford to investigate carefully, and then pulled that number out at random.

I don't buy the IRS story. This was done to screw these people over deliberately. Imhofe got it right, (God, I thought I'd never catch myself saying that), in a flash of deliciously unconscious irony : "This is positively Nixonian".

But my thoughts on the patriotic language stand. It's got a name, you know? Fetishism.

"I'm with the Constitutional Freedom Party. If you're not with me you're against the Constitutional and don't believe in Freedom."

But even neo-fascist sleazebag fetishists have real rights that deserve to be protected by the Constitution.