There’s a lot of yelling and screaming going on by the so-called tea-baggers and their supporters in the GOP and Congress about freedom of speech and Nazis. The problem with all of this is that the vast majority of these people don’t have the vaguest idea what they’re talking about. So, here’s the deal:

You have the right to free speech. You don’t have the right to be disruptive to the point that those who are in the room for a legitimate reason can’t hear or exercise their rights to free speech. Just as you can’t yell "fire" in a crowded theater, your right to free speech extends only so far as it does not interfere with my right to free speech and my right to hear someone else speak.

As for the Nazi thing that Mr. Beck and Ms. Bachmann and others are yelling at the tops of their collective lungs: They wouldn’t know an honest-to-God Nazi if one bit them in the ass. If this really were truly a Nazi thing, those protesters being bussed all over hell’s half-acre on behalf of the GOP would either have been gunned down on the streets or hauled off to concentration camps by now, never to be seen or heard from again.

Congresswoman Bachmann? Suddenly didn’t show up for work today. Mr. Beck? Oh, he was hauled off the set right in the middle of his show after being beaten silly on camera.

Townhall? Forget about it. This bill would be law by now. No debate, civil or otherwise. Want to protest the fact that no one asked your opinion or tried to explain the bill to you? Nothing was more effective for the Nazis than to blow a protester’s brains all over the sidewalk. Tended to change people’s priorities real quick.

Net/net: This ain’t even close to the Nazis, and I don’t think anybody really ought to be going there. It’s offensive. It’s ignorant. And it’s not even close to being reality.