In The Land of the Blind...

...David Corn's nearly-six-year-old is queen. I don't really mind if grown men want to throw their lives away believing hysterical conspiracy theories about the fascists ruling America, but how sad is it when they feel a need to use their children to make their pathetic points? Here's Corn, direct from the Loony Bin:

...the older girl wanted to send America a birthday card. But she immediately recognized a problem: where to send it?

"Well," I said to her, "if you're looking for the person who is in charge of America, I guess that would be the president."

Now, George W. Bush is not too popular in our house. I did write a best-selling book with the demure title, The Lies of George W. Bush. I don't indoctrinate my kids. (Really, really, I don't.) But apples don't bounce far. More than once when I have challenged them on a statement and suggested that they have not been truthful, I've received the reply: "Daddy, I'm not a liar. George W. Bush is a liar. I'm not." So it goes. And they were both very upset when Bush won reelection in November. "But everyone I know was voting for John Kerry," my nearly-six-year-old said at the time. "Everyone, like Zoe and Cali."

Zoe and Cali were two girls who lived up the street. They were, respectively, four and two-years-old. Yes, my daughter had conducted a focus group of her peers. But, alas, the sampling was too small and slightly biased.

I wasn't surprised, then, when my daughter responded to me by saying, "But I don't want to give the card to George W. Bush. It's for America. Not for him."

For America. Not for him. Here was something to be proud of. She had already learned on her own -- and she wasn't taught this -- that there is a difference between America and the person in charge of America. Many scoundrels who wave the flag of patriotism try to deny this distinction. In recent days, I've noticed that more and more Bush-backers have accused critics of Bush's handling of the war of undermining the national interest -- that is, being unpatriotic -- and, worse, undercutting the troops in Iraq. But speaking the truth about Bush's misguided war is in the national interest. Had the patriots of the antiwar movement of the 1960s won the day in 1968, 25,000 or so Americans (and untold numbers of Vietnamese) would not have lost their lives in the subsequent six years of fighting that accomplished absolutely nothing. If a citizen believes that Bush is misleading the nation (or "disassembling") on the war, how can it not be that citizen's duty to point this out and agitate accordingly?

My God, but they have some real fun at the Corn house, don't they? Excuse me, I have to go retch uncontrollably for an hour or so. Man, I feel dirty just reading that...