IF YOU HATE US, YOU JUST DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE SAYIN'. The mishegas over Obama's non-wearing of a flag pin seems to have made "patriotism" the word of the day for conservatives. Their contributions are mostly simple jingo howls on the order of Dean Esmay's, "Yes, Virginia, there really are deeply unpatriotic people. Deal with it." The Armed Liberal goes for the long form, regrettably to the same effect. After an extended metaphor in which, it appears, people who criticize the Bush Administration are abusive parents and America their whimpering child-victim, Armed Liberal declares that liberal intellectuals like Matthew Yglesias who go for a less table-ponding style of patriotism

are fundamentally missing what it is that Middle Americans see in America. And in doing so, they do two things - as the 'shapers' of our culture, they mis-shape it in fundamentally damaging ways (thank God for hysterisis), and they isolate themselves increasingly from the mass of American people who are grateful for the patrimony America has given them, and who are willing to contribute to the future.

Perhaps that's why children are so out of fashion in certain circles...

The fit is so strong upon AL that he doesn't stop to explain how, if Middle Americans see patriotism clearly as he does, liberals "mis-shape" American culture "in fundamentally damaging ways." If no one's listening to them, what's the big deal?

This latest round of patriotic talk does not relate to anything tangible upon which patriotism is based. In another post AL quotes at length from one John Schaar, who talks about principles and commitments (and, of course, the unpatriotism of others), none of which suggests what might cause the lump in one's throat at the sight of the flag or the sound of the anthem. He who feels it knows it, as they say, and I think anyone randomly hauled in off the street might better express it.

That expression might not include a detailed citation of historical events and documents -- though his grade-school social studies teacher would be pleased if it did -- just things observed and participated in: a small-town Memorial Day parade, a picnic out by the barn, a blues club where they served 40 ounce beers and a cup if you wanted it, a waitress telling about her recently deceased dog in Nashville, a couple of chubby, giggling ladies in pantsuits hustling one another into a male strip club on the old Tenderloin in San Francisco ("C'mon, gal, we're goin' in!"), sand-surfing the Great Dunes in Colorado, hundreds of firefighters standing in dress uniform outside a comrade's funeral service in Greenpoint... every encountered person and event unique as a snowflake, all part of America, not identified with a foreign land or even a world community so much as with a place large enough to contain such variety and still be called home. Even if the subject were not a Constitutional scholar nor a professor of history, he might instinctively connect that richness of experience to the freedoms that made it possible and the struggles endured to keep it so. That may be what the flag and the anthem stir in him.

At a time when a dispiritingly large majority of Americans think the country is going in the wrong direction, you'd think our conservative friends would try to promote the blessings of patriotism, and cheerfully invite all of us to share in them. Yet they're focused on making people afraid not to display patriotism -- as if patriotism were something one could be hectored and bullied into. They seem to have a depressingly low opinion of America.