If you've been paying attention to our national discourse over the past few years, you've heard liberals called traitors, Democrats compared to terrorists and a whole lot about how opposing the war hurts the troops.

Maybe no one has taken more heat over that time than the Dixie Chicks. After Natalie Maines' infamous comment about Bush (which the Chicks refer to as "the incident"), things went far beyond a few accusations of treason. Not only were they widely boycotted, but their lives were threatened. Album sales predictably plummeted.

The country music world waited more than three years for the Dixies' next album, to see if they would make nice and come back to the fold. The Chicks' response came through loud and clear:

"Fuck you."

Taking the Long Way is a protest album, make no mistake about it. It's not protesting the war, or Bush, or conservative policies. It's protesting a political environment in which they were told they were traitorous sluts for speaking their minds, told they should sit down, shut up and look pretty.

It's impossible to listen to "Not Ready to Make Nice", their deliberately inflammatory first single, without thinking: "This is how you do it. This is how you stand up for yourself, how you refuse to be silenced." These three women, subject to so much unjustified hate since they had the temerity to criticize the president, are not done by a long shot.

They're not bitter. They're not vengeful. They're indignant, and that makes all the difference in the world.

The Democratic Party could learn a lot from the Dixie Chicks. Aside from a few strident voices like Russ Feingold, Democrats still haven't learned to stand up against Bush.

As Glenn Greenwald discusses in a long and rather depressing post, the Democrats are so afraid of being tarred with the "weak on national security" brush that they continually roll over for whatever the Bush administration wants, whether it's preemptive war with Iraq, warrantless spying on Americans or the Patriot Act. Digby points out that Republicans have been using this tactic for going on 40 years now.

Ann Coulter, who has basically advocated the execution of liberals, appeared on Today and The Tonight Show last week. Where was the outrage from Democrats? Where was the condemnation of this outspoken bigot being given such wide and uncritical exposure? (Peter Daou has an interesting analysis of what these appearances really mean.)

It essentially comes down to this: How are the American people going to trust Democrats to defend the country if they won't defend themselves?

Though some conservatives have tried to spin it like the Dixie Chicks' defiant stance was a pose to sell records, the truth is they had no idea how this album would be received and if it would sell at all (Times Select required for article):

The Dixie Chicks and their manager insisted to their record company that "we need to approach everything like not one radio station is going to play one single song," Ms. Maines said. Asked about country radio, she said, "Do you really think we're going to make an album for you and trust the future of our career to people who turned on us in a day?"

That is how you do it. Have faith in your message and yourself. Speak fearlessly and stand up for yourself, and you will be rewarded: Four weeks after its release, Taking the Long Way is already one of the top-selling albums of the year, despite virtually no radio play. It has been the No. 1 seller on Amazon since well before its release. It's an amazing album.

The American people are desperately hungry for new leadership, but simply waiting for the Republican Party to implode is not enough. If the Democrats would stand up for themselves, speak the truth about what Bush is doing to our country and the reality of the situation in Iraq, they would find an audience they never knew they had.