This week’s display of squalid politics by Congressman Steve Stockman just makes me sad. I’ve written about Stockman before. It wasn’t so much that he chose to invite Ted Nugent to President Obama’s State of the Union address. That was certainly shabby behavior. But what I find most sad is this line from Stockman’s press release:

“I am excited to have a patriot like Ted Nugent joining me in the House Chamber to hear from President Obama.”

A patriot. Stockman considers Ted Nugent a patriot. What sort of patriot wonders if the United States would be better off if the Confederacy had won the U.S. Civil War? Here’s what Nugent wrote in a Washington Times column:

Because our legislative, judicial and executive branches of government hold the 10th Amendment in contempt, I’m beginning to wonder if it would have been best had the South won the Civil War.

Nugent is certainly free to disagree with the U.S. Supreme Court. I often disagree with them my ownself. But it would never occur to me to wonder if maybe the Confederacy should have prevailed in the Civil War. Steve Stockman has some odd ideas about what constitutes patriotism.

Congressman Steve Stockman (Republican Lunatic – Texas)

And what sort of patriot dodges the draft, brags about it, but encourages others to enlist in military service and fight in our wars? In a 1977 interview in High Times magazine, Nugent discussed how he evaded the draft.

So I got my notice to be in the draft. Do you think I was gonna lay down my guitar and go play army? Give me a break!

To prepare for his draft physical, Nugent described how he stopped bathing, how he ate nothing but a junk food diet, how he urinated and defecated in his pants. He told the interviewer he smoked meth before reporting for the physical, apparently to be sure he was in the right frame of mind. And, of course, Nugent was declared unfit for military service.

I may disagree with folks who avoided military service during the Vietnam War, but I respect those who were forthright about it — the men who went to prison for refusing to report, even the ones who chose to leave the country rather than fight for a war they didn’t believe in. Those people made principled decisions and they accepted the consequences. I have no respect for people who supported the war but chose to game the system because they simply couldn’t be bothered to serve in the military. In that same High Times interview, Nugent went on to say this:

But you know the funny thing about it? I’d make an incredible army man. I’d be a colonel before you knew what hit you, and I’d have the baddest bunch of motherfuckin’ killers you’d ever seen in my platoon. But I just wasn’t into it. I was too busy doin’ my own thing, you know?

Here’s another ‘funny’ thing about it: Steve Stockman considers this hypocritical braggart to be a patriot.

Ted Nugent (woman-hating, gun nut, coward, pedophile Republican – Michigan)

I don’t think Nugent’s sex life has anything to do with patriotism — you can, I suppose, be a pedophile and still love your country — but I’m going to mention it here anyway, just as an indication of exactly how much bad behavior Stockman is willing to overlook when he’s inviting guests to the State of the Union speech.

Nugent is a self-confessed pedophile. He’s admitted to numerous sexual relationships with underage girls and young women. One of them was Courtney Love, who has publicly stated she gave Nugent a blow job when she was twelve (which would have made Nugent around 28 years old).

A lot of rockers in those days probably did the same thing — and also got away with it. But Congressman Stockman professes to be concerned about young girls. In fact, he opposes immigration reform because he claims it will result in the sexual abuse of girls.

Our failure to secure our border has led to horrific, tragic stories of innocents brutally smuggled into the United States to serve as slave labor, and thousands of young girls forced into prostitution.

Apparently he’s less concerned about the welfare of young girls who voluntarily give blow jobs to rock musicians. Maybe he thinks that’s an example of entrepreneurial spirit?

Still, I admit Nugent’s sexual kinks have nothing to do with his qualities as a patriot — only his qualities as a human being. Stockman, to my knowledge, never claimed Ted Nugent was a decent human being; he only said Nugent was a patriot. So what makes this aging rock musician a patriot in Stockman’s eyes?

I can only assume it’s Nugent’s passionate hatred of President Obama and women Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, Barbara Boxer, and Dianne Feinstein.

In case the audio is unclear, here’s what Nugent said:

“I was in Chicago and I said ‘Hey Obama, you might want to suck on one of these you punk.’ Obama, he’s a piece of shit, and I told him to suck on my machine gun. Then I was in New York and I said, ‘Hey Hillary you might want to ride one of these into the sunset you worthless bitch.’ Then I was out in California and I thought, Barbara Boxer, she might want to suck on my machine gun. Hey Dianne Feinstein, ride one of these you worthless whore.”

Imagine the reaction from Republicans if a Democrat had invited a guest who called President George W. Bush ‘a piece of shit’ to the State of the Union address.

I’m a fan of the First Amendment. I’m pretty close to being a free speech absolutist. I’m proud to live in a nation where pathetic asswipes like Ted Nugent feel free to say any hateful thing they want. But it’s shameful for an elected official of our government to consider Nugent a patriot.

Ted Nugent is no patriot. He’s a coward and a bully. He had an opportunity to serve his country in a war he supported; he chose, instead, to shit his pants. Like every other American, Steve Stockman also had an opportunity to express his patriotism and join the military when he turned eighteen. Did he? No.

Stockman, however, had a unique opportunity to demonstrate his patriotism. On 19 April, 1995 Timothy McVeigh detonated a bomb at the Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people, including 19 children under the age of six. Stockman, an arch-conservative serving his first term in Congress, received an anonymous fax shortly after the explosion, containing information about the terrorist event. It says something about Stockman’s politics that domestic terrorists felt he was enough of a kindred spirit that they’d send him a fax about the explosion. But even more revealing is what Stockman did with that fax.

He sent it to the headquarters of the National Rifle Association. Sometime later he also forwarded it to the Justice Department.

So maybe it’s not so odd that Steve Stockman considers Ted Nugent a patriot after all.