First resort

The unrelenting campaign of vilification of the proposed Cordoba Center brings to mind one of my favorite definitions in Ambrose Bierce's The Devil's Dictionary:

Patriotism, n. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name.

   In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last resort of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer, I beg to submit that it is the first.