So Joe Biden has praised higher taxes as patriotic? Big deal. Charlie Rangel likes to denounce tax cuts as racist. He once said, “It’s not ‘spic’ or ‘nigger’ anymore. They say, ‘Let’s cut taxes.’”

So get it right: If you oppose higher taxes or support tax cuts, you’re unpatriotic or racist. Probably both. But then — if you’ve had any exposure to the Left in recent times — you knew that.

Remember that Howard Dean said, flat-out, that John Ashcroft — the attorney general of the United States — was “not a patriot.” If you’re a conservative and you say that, you are drummed out of polite society, consigned to a McCarthyite cave. If you’re a liberal and you say that, they make you chairman of the Democratic National Committee.