Robin Hayes, a Republican congressman from North Carolina, provided details on Americans who do not qualify as real. “Liberals hate real Americans that work, and accomplish, and achieve, and believe in God.”

Where to start.

Wow.

How about with my own family. And in the plainest, most unadorned ways I can.

How about my mom's father - my "grandpa" - who at the age of 6, worked in a Greek restaurant to help his family pay his way. Barefoot (literally, we have a photo of him from that time), this child worked his way up, by hand, to become an esteemed professor of Educational History and Philosophy at a major American university. After writing countless books, teaching for decades and remaining active politically, physically and intellectually, he died in his 80s, a man very passionate about his country, about his heritage, and about his field of expertise - education.

In addition to his education, and raising his family, he was in World War II. He survived the Great Depression which haunted him until his death - he would, despite being financially comfortable, go to the dumpsters outside grocery stores to retrieve softened fruits, bruised veggies, and focused on buying discounted foods that he would freeze. Why?

Because he remembered how it was to not have any.

He was born into poverty, into a family of Bluegrass mountain people, and died a respected educator, philosopher and professional.

He worked his ass off. He was a passionate, intelligent, educated, insanely hard-working man.

He was a liberal.

My dad's mom - my grandmother - was born at an age when women could not have abortions legally - she died never knowing that I knew she had suffered the "coathanger" method as a young woman of 14. She was born to Italian immigrants, and saw her own brother get shot in the streets a few years later in what would be quite at home in a "Sopranos" episode today, except she lived it. Working her way up by hand in the business world, she became an owner of several businesses, ran them singlehandedly and left my dad with a legacy of business ownership by which he could carry on if he so desired.

A proud, stubborn, driven woman, she loved her glamour, her Johnny Carson, her Vegas weekends and most of all, big band music. She made us pray as kids because she felt we should, but as I grew up less Christian in my beliefs, she accepted that, and loved me anyway. She believed in us having every opportunity to succeed, and left us with an inheritance to help us reach our dreams. She was stubborn as hell, generous, and tough as nails.

And...with one exception - the Reagan years - she voted liberal.

I could name even more in my family - doctors and butchers, scientists and evangelicals alike - who espoused liberal values not because they were "unAmerican", and certainly not because they shied away from working their asses off.

And I resent - deeply - that people like my grandparents survived depressions and wars so that someone like Robin Hayes can paint every liberal mind with a sweeping, arrogant, sick brush that says "this is what you are".

So, on behalf of my child-labor-surviving professor grandfather, my illegal-abortion surviving self-made businesswoman grandmother, myself a college graduate that worked THREE JOBS SIMULTANEOUSLY while in graduate school and have never asked this country for a dime - and everyone else in my Italian-American-Indian-Scottish family tree, who were -with pale few exceptions - liberal voters who deeply, passionately love not only our country but care about the future of our species, may I just say.....

Screw you, Robin Hayes.

Its minds like yours that make me sick for the ignorance they spout, and the ignorance it feeds, and the people who would for one moment agree with you are either cruel - or easily led. Both are destructive to the future of this country.