When I was in seventh- or eighth-grade social studies, we learned all about the American Revolution, then called simply "The Revolutionary War." Of course, when I say "all," I don't really mean "all" -- I mean we learned the broad strokes of history, the stories that provide the mythic geneology for our dysfunctional national family. We learned, for example, that we had the Articles of Confederation before we had the Constitution, but we didn't really learn about why the switch was necessary or that ten guys, nine of whom you've never heard of, were President of the United States during that period.* But we learned about the Continental Congresses, the Constitutional Convention, various battles with the British, the Stamp Act, the Sugar Act, the Tea Act.

But what we were really being taught, looking back, was the drama wrought by men like Nathan Hale and Patrick Henry. Henry, as has been noted around the left blogosphere this week, famously demanded, "Give me liberty or give me death!"** Kos's direct reference to the deriliction of American character shown by conservatives since The Day Everything In The History Of The World Changed Forever And Ever Including The Pee Contents Of Our Collective Undies has sparked a minor firestorm among right bloggers, who have responded to everything except the substance of his charge. Conservatives are scared out of their minds, and they don't give a tinker's damn about the freedoms that Henry fought for over the course of two decades. They want a King. They want to give up their Constitutional rights -- except the ones codified in the Second Amendment, because, hey, they might have to shoot a terrorist someday!

These people are now being faced with the uncomfortable reality that words mean things. "Liberty" is not a void into which you may toss an NRA membership card, a Toby Keith CD and a dozen warrantless domestic wiretap transcripts. When Henry stirred the Virginia House of Burgesses to war, it was not over a meaningless concept designed to put political opponents on the defensive. "Liberty" meant self-determination and freedom from tyranny -- freedom of body and mind from the aggression of a corrupt government. When people in the reality-based community point out that their scare-pee has soaked their liberties, they have to implicitly acknowledge that that's true. This is the first step not just to reclaiming our country, but to reclaiming the language of national decency -- "freedom," "democracy," "justice." These words, too, mean things that for too long the Phobocons have kept hogtied in a basement at NSA headquarters.

As for Nathan Hale, we learned that, before being hanged by the British for espionage during the war, he declared, "I only regret that I have but one life to give for my country." "Sacrifice" is the other one we need to reclaim, because for most Phobocons, this terrorism gambit has been the biggest exercise ever in what the French might call le sacrifice des autres.*** Noted fearmonger Jonah Goldberg can't fight in the war that he thinks is so vital and that he champions so tirelessly because, well, he's out of shape and he has a kid and anyway, he can do much more for the war effort by screaming into the echo chamber through his computer and eating Cheetos all day. Goldberg and his Phobocon cohort all have but one life to give for their country, and for the ideals that it used to represent; the tragedy is that they don't give it, and they never will.

* The one you've heard of was the seventh President of the United States in Congress Assembled -- John Hancock.

*** They probably don't call it that, though.