Liberal "Patriotism"

After yesterday, the complaint from the left that their patriotism is being impugned is far more untenable. By their uniformly sullen response to the killing of Abu al-Zarqawi, they have forfeited any claim to being loyal Americans. Their loyalty is not to their homeland or the things it stands for anymore. It's to the U.N., to the world community of bien pensants, to the Democratic vision of a socialist paradise where they, the intelligentsia, are the philosopher oligarchy, governing by virture of their moral superiority. They criticize our military for fighting in ways that minimize American lives, as well as those of bystanders. They seem to see this event as a setback rather than a victory for our side.

How can I say this? Isn't this insensitive, the new standard of depravity? I say it because the meaning of patriotism demands it. Patriotism is love of one's homeland, one's own people, one's champions. It means support for the efforts of one's nation to do good in the world, such as overthrowing evil despotic regimes, as we have done in every military venture we have undertaken since World War I. For anyone to disparage our leaders and troops and make blatantly dishonest attacks on them and exhibit such hatred that it begins to resemble rooting for those who kill our men and women and commit routine acts of atrocities against noncombatants is not patriotism, nor Americanism, nor freedom-loving, nor democratic, nor even humane. They exist in a universe where anything good for our country, any success, any act of valor or conviction or support for right is seen as a defeat.