While you were sleeping

“AMERICA, FUCK YEAH!” – Team America, World Police

Among the many, many (many) things that separate liberals from conservatives (such as rationality, compassion, tolerance, fairness, but I digress…) is the ability for liberals to look history square in the eye and not flinch. We do not seek to gloss over the ugly bits. We acknowledge and embrace them as a way of moving beyond them.

Conservatives look at American history the same way they look at sex; as something disgusting to hide away from the neighbors and lie about. They pretend that the more unsavory parts never happened and, in doing so, fail to learn the valuable, and costly, lessons those parts taught us.

This obsessive-compulsive tendency is around us all the time. Sarah Palin’s “Thanks but no thanks” and her “Surveyor’s marks”. Glenn Beck’s “taking back” of the Civil Rights movement for conservatives…