Second Thoughts/Stuffed Heads

As a love that dared not speak its name and then refused to shut up, homosexuality was officially superseded last October by the breathless, embattled new patriotism of former “Movement” radicals who met in Washington to burst together out of the closet of “repressive anti-Americanism” that had imprisoned them since the 1960s. “Coming out” as a patriot, warned speaker after speaker at the “Second Thoughts” Conference, would mean losing one’s friends, one’s social standing, even one’s job. Not to mention braving the scorn of the Washington Post’s Sidney Blumenthal, whose caricature of the conference-goers sustained their wildest nightmares of liberal media treason. Gosh, it’s tough to love America.

Unlike gays, who’ve accurately identified the sources of their peril, second thoughters spent their weekend shadow-boxing with the phantasms of a “hate-America left” that they thin...