In spite of

One of my Facebook contacts posted one of his inevitable comments today about true patriots opposing taxation. I was about to call him to task on this, but I went to www.dictionary.com to look up the definition of "patriot." There it was, the second definition:

a person who regards himself or herself as a defender, especially of individual rights, against presumed interference by the federal government.

That got me to thinking. So a true conservative patriot, by this usage, is someone who thinks the government of our country is evil. I guess in light of the the first definition

a person who loves, supports, and defends his or her country and its interests with devotion

this means defending the actual land mass, or perhaps the assorted like-minded people, against the USA and the Constitution.

Perhaps I think too much, but again I remembered the Conservative Bible Project, a movement to use public opinion and crowd-sourcing (presumably from the right kind of people, not those evil liberals) to rescue the Bible from liberal bias. Presumably, Jesus will turn out to be an anti-government capitalist who favors hunkering down in one's fortress and accumulating weapons. We will discover that Jesus was actually on the side of the Pharisees, not of the woman caught in adultery. We will discover that the basic gospel message was all about accumulating wealth. And in the garden Peter will be commended for cutting off the man's ear.

It's simply a question of who is the boss. The true conservative says, "I, myself, am the boss, the standard of the Universe."