Young Republicans

"[T]HE modern conservative movement, which dominates the modern Republican Party, has the emotional maturity of a bratty 13-year-old."

I'm surprised that it took Paul Krugman, normally a pretty astute observer of this sort of thing, so long to come to that conclusion. But at least someone besides the Daily Kos is drawing attention to the hypocrisy of this particularly vile strain of Republican thought and behavior. Patriotism, as Johnson's oft-quoted saying has it, is indeed the last refuge of the scoundrel, though one might want to make a further pedantic distinction between patriotism and nationalism; and this juvenile glee over Chicago's thwarted 2016 Olympic bid proves that love of country is not quite so close to the heart of Republican sentiment as they might like us to think. Their complaints of liberals who ambush and then duck for cover behind political correctness (and here I would say, no, President Carter, racism was not behind Joe Wilson's outburst; it was crass, misguided populism) will lack much substance until "I love America" stops being bandied about as though it were a Get Out of Jail Free card.