The Bilge of Jonah Goldberg

Jonah Goldberg, the Right's least intellectual thinker, continues the assault on the patriotism of liberals. What bilge. He decries the fact that liberals will not use the term, conveniently omitting that the right wing has co-opted the term and have given it a negative meaning. Where do these bozos come from, and why don't they go back under their rocks?

When Democrats do speak of patriotism, it is usually as a means of finding fault with Republicans, corporations or America itself. Hence the irony that questioning the patriotism of liberals is a grievous sin, but doing likewise to conservatives is fine. That's how then-candidate Howard Dean could with a straight face insist that then-Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft "is no patriot. He's a direct descendant of Joseph McCarthy."

Indeed, the one area in which Obama explicitly invokes patriotism is in the realm of economics. He proposes a Patriot Corporation Act that would punish corporations that legally avoid U.S. taxes. ("Now here is a Patriot Act everyone can get behind," gushed the Nation's William Greider.)

Meanwhile, Michelle Obama famously declared last month that her husband's candidacy elicited pride in her country for the first time in her adult life. I like to think that's not really what she meant, but it's a sign of how ill-equipped she and so many others are on the left when it comes to discussing such issues.