If you, like most Americans, are eagerly anticipating enjoying one or more Independence Day festivities, you probably feel pretty normal, and you should. The 4th of July is the greatest national birthday party in the world every year and a country that already doesn’t need much of an excuse to spend quality time with grills and beer coolers really does it up right. It’s a day or two filled with pure, unadulterated joy and fun.

Naturally, modern American liberals HATE that.

American leftists today seem to have genetic resistance to joy. If that joy is brought about by anything patriotic, their pinched psyches violently reject it. Given that, it is easy to see why Independence Day makes them plumb the depths of their characteristic misery every year.

I happened upon one story this morning that perfectly exemplified this and, while still pre-coffee and groggy, figured I could easily find more. Within a few minutes, I had three and decided that was enough of a representative sample for this post.

Exhibit A is provided by the same journalist who recently soiled himself while firing a weapon that 115 lb female shooters regularly handle with ease. After doing hardcore journalism to discover that guns are loud, he has decided that “God Bless America” scares him even more than AR-15s do. He really thinks he is doing…wait, it can’t be “God’s work”…um…super important stuff:

First guns, now I take on god: Baseball must permanently retire ‘God Bless America’ https://t.co/QJbaS7ZZKb pic.twitter.com/zfqIuXL7fY — Gersh Kuntzman (@GershKuntzman) June 30, 2016

Here is a brief, but still painful, excerpt from the word-barf Kuntzman is so proud of:

It’s time for God to stop blessing America during the seventh-inning stretch. Welcome to the July 4 holiday weekend — when once again, baseball fans will be assaulted by the saccharine-sweet non-anthem “God Bless America” at stadia all over this great land. But no matter which home team you root, root, root for, “God Bless America” should be sent permanently to the bench.

Even though this may not precisely be related to the holiday, Kuntzman still mentions it. Let’s be honest though: many teams still play the song at every game, and there are plenty of other holiday weekends for which the other teams break it out. He just needed to whine about Independence Day all the while pretending that’s not what he is really doing. Kuntzman also trots out statistics showing how offensive “God Bless America” is to liberals and atheists, which inadvertently makes the case that maybe it should be played between all the innings. On today’s Los Angeles Times Op-Ed page, Mark Oppenheimer is less coy about his unease with outward expressions of love for the United States. Here’s his headline: Flags are great for holiday celebration, but hyper-patriotism is un-American. What follows are hundreds of words that I’m sure Oppenheimer thinks make his point about flags and “hyper-patriotism” (which most Americans simply call “patriotism”). In reality, he makes a better case for committing himself to ongoing therapy with a competent mental health professional. Summarizing: Oppenheimer loves the American flag for Independence Day festivities but it makes him “uneasy” the rest of the year. That’s quite a love/hate relationship there. Here is a little peek into Oppenheimer’s uneasiness:

I come from flag-ambivalent America. My neighborhood is peopled by gays and Jews, professors and social workers, and Catholics of the Dorothy Day persuasion. Yoga practitioners and yoga teachers. Vegetarians. Bicycling enthusiasts. We love the Fourth of July, with its long weekend, its parades, its backyard barbecues (veggie burgers available). It wouldn’t be Independence Day without flag bunting on floats, flags lining our Main Streets, flags adorning houses. But we aren’t much for patriotic symbolism the rest of the year. For us, it’s an article of faith that crude patriotism quickly turns on the underdog, the minority. We know how the flag is used to impose loyalty tests, which we find un-American.

Let’s set aside the fact that he presumes to speak for a variety of religions, sexual orientations, professions, and participants in various recreational activities. An examination of the liberal penchant for paternalism and sweeping generalizations would require something book-length. It would appear that Oppenheimer’s “flag-ambivalent America” is plagued by marauding bands of flag enthusiasts who are forever “turning” on gay academic Catholics (who occasionally brunch with Jewish social workers) as they bicycle home from yoga workouts to heat up veggie burgers. Cool story, bro. Who knew New Haven, CT, had seen such an influx of flag-waving rednecks? Lastly, what would a long 4th of July weekend be without a liberal scold needlessly shrieking like a psychotic commie lunatic thoughtfully warning us about the dangers of fireworks. The author of this article spent some time this morning engaging in some back-and-forth with several conservatives on Twitter and never really grasping why he was being taken to task. Here was his response to it all:

Me: Sometimes idiots hurt themselves with fireworks Conservative Twitter: OMFG WHY DO YOU WANT TO BAN FIREWORKS HOW DARE YOU — Christopher Ingraham (@_cingraham) July 1, 2016

Mostly, Ingraham was being taken to task for being a joy-sucking scold. His article bordered on ridiculous, featuring stats and a big, pretty picture chart that proved nothing more than American fireworks use peaks in July every year.

So. Much. Journalism-ing.

Next from Christopher Ingraham: People who get hit by lightning on golf courses are usually golfing during a storm. WITH PICTURES!

Modern American leftists are emotionally constipated, offense-seeking, finger-wagging shrews who are motivated solely by the desire to make everyone else as miserable as they are. The really weird thing is that they are under the impression that it is the conservatives who are like that. They’re either in the midst of the longest-running collective psychotic break ever, or they know the truth about themselves and that merely compounds their misery. Puritans in the 1600s probably smiled more in a day than a crusading twenty-something American social justice warrior media hack will in a lifetime should he or she live to 100.

What the three pieces referenced here are all indicative of is the overwhelming liberal urge to establish credibility in their intellectually stunted ideological hives by being apologetically American. Patriotism is only cool if your neighbors happened to have just been blown up by a foreign enemy. As we’ve seen post 9-11, even that has a shelf life with them.

Kuntzman, Oppenheimer, and Ingraham couldn’t let all of the unbridled American joy pass without negative commentary in an era where the president of the United States has just spent two terms traveling the globe and publicly offering his thoughts on all of our faults.

I would say it’s sad but I plan on having too much fun eating hot dogs, drinking beer, watching fireworks and waving an American flag to worry about it.