It's Independence Day

And what country can preserve its liberties, if it's rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? --Thomas Jefferson

The gadflies are buzzing about "patriotism" again

The teacher-basher title is up for grabs over at Flypaper blog where they’ve decided that it’s their 4th of July, patriotic duty to attack teachers unions. The Fordham neocons rightly concede the bashing championship to National Review wing-nut Thomas Sowell who blames “unpatriotic” teachers for Hitler’s victory in France. Then superfly Eric Osberg makes it worse, confessing, “I’m not enough of a historian to wade into that issue."

Hey Osberg! Please don’t blame your teachers. Read a damn book once in a while. After all, Sowell’s not much of an historian either. You’ll notice his quote about blaming the teachers union for fascism is not attributable to anyone. It’s actually all part of the neocon’s current ideological campaign starting with Jonah Goldberg’s book, Liberal Fascism, to rewrite history and equate Hitler and fascism with the left.

The French left, for those who don’t read, led the resistance movement against the fascists during WWII—and against France’s own right-wing, “patriotic” Vichy puppet government. That regime was led by Field Marshal Petain, a “patriotic” WWI hero who wound up collaborating with the Nazis and depriving French citizens of all their hard earned democratic rights.

Hmmm.