Sour liberals hit another holiday

  Just to be sure you don't enjoy your holiday weekend with a barbecue, a parade and family fun stuff, the New York Times is out with a primer on how to experience July 4th in an environmentally sound way. 
  The article includes the admonition not to waste carbon by boiling potatoes for potato salad (described as "a pale mixture of boiled potatoes and mayonnaise that is sometimes appetizing but always wasteful"), but if you must eat it, be sure to cut the potato pieces small.
  Chiding the public for eating beef (gasp!), the author encourages skipping pie, not because of Michelle O's strict food guidelines, but because heating an oven is another insult to the environment. 
  Wailing about holiday celebrations isn't unusual for liberals; one Thanksgiving morning many years ago, prune faced Colman McCarthy appeared on c-Span to disparage the eating of turkey. His appearance was bizarre, depressing and discouraging. He reflects here on that appearance:

I insist on using accurate language to describe Thanksgiving: our only national holiday focused on a corpse, a turkey's. Even then, that's not really the full story. The Thanksgiving cadaver is a chemicalized, antibiotic-laced, bioengineered blob of high-fat, high-cholesterol flesh that is part of the food chain because the National Turkey Federation, among other vested interests, stakes large amounts of advertising and promotional money to dupe the public into equating their birds -- profitable "production units" -- as essential to Thursday's celebration of the fall harvest.

  It seems that holidays, particularly joyful ones, have to be ruined by liberals, who often have sanctimonious contempt for all things patriotic and/or Christian, Christmas being a favorite target. 
  Particularly if they're wealthy, you can guarantee that with any holiday, sour faced doomsayers will crawl out from under their rocks and solemnly intone their curses to be sure every holiday has a measure of acid.
  But this holiday, July 4, has another reason to be dissed this year. A Harvard study suggests, no, declares that children who've experienced a July 4 parade and celebration will be permanently damaged more likely to become Republicans. Pointy heads at Harvard warn parents about July 4 celebrations:

The paper, titled “Shaping the Nation: Estimating the Impact of Fourth of July Using a Natural Experiment,” examines how important childhood experiences shape political views and behavior patterns later in life by investigating the impact of youth participation in Independence Day activities and adult engagement in the political process.  

  In fact, the researchers say: 

“We were surprised to find that childhood experiences of Fourth July celebrations could have such persistent effects. The evidence suggests that important childhood events can have a permanent impact on political beliefs and behavior and that Fourth of July celebrations in the US affect the nation's political landscape,” 

  So let's be sure to celebrate July 4 with gusto this year, including fireworks, barbecue, glow in the dark bracelets and lots of red, white and blue.
  But be warned: if you're having fun on July 4, if you like celebrating our independence, if you get misty eyed when you see a gigantic Old Glory flapping over your town, if you feel the fiercely self-governing blood of the early patriots coursing through your veins, you might be a conservative or, at the very least, a Republican.
  Apparently that's a bad rap these days.
  At least in some circles.
  Hey, have fun, youse guys who despise the Heartland's celebration of this great country. Go ahead and curse the commonplace. Enjoy the grace of iron clothing. 
  I gotta barbecue to hit.