PATRIOTISM AIN'T WHAT IT USED TO BE.

A lot of crap has been published in recognition of the Glorious Fourth this year; see, for example, Larry "The Big Snort" Kudlow's "Keeping Freedom, and Growth, in the Fourth," which contains the amazing line, "the long list of complaints against George III’s Britain included: 'cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world' (protectionism), 'imposing Taxes on us without our Consent' (remedied with supply-side tax cuts)..."

But the Crackpot Cup must go to Pitchfork Pat Buchanan. The prime paleocon wonders aloud, "Is America Still a Nation?... We do not speak one language, but rather English, Spanish and a host of others. We long ago ceased to profess the same religion." Plus kids talk with a dirty mouth and basketball is no longer a white man's game!

Buchanan's read the writing on the wall, though, or at least Rod Dreher, and knows he has to gussy up his Old Man Yells At Cloud routine with some fancy talk, so he mentions the Federalist Papers and quotes Ernest Renan. Yet even through the Olympian clouds a troubling vision burns:

[Renan says] “Of all cults, that of the ancestors is the most legitimate: our ancestors have made us what we are. A heroic past with great men and glory … is the social capital upon which the national idea rests. These are the essential conditions of being a people: having common glories in the past and a will to continue them in the present; having made great things together and wishing to make them again.” 

Does this sound at all like us today? 

Watching our Lilliputians tearing down statues and monuments, renaming buildings and streets, rewriting history books to replace heroes and historical truths with the doings of ciphers, are we disassembling the nation we once were? 

“One loves in proportion to the sacrifices that one has committed and the troubles that one has suffered,” writes Renan, “One loves the house that one has built and that one passes on.”

Are we passing on the house we inherited — or observing its demolition?

Yes, it's just not One Nation Indivisible anymore if we aren't celebrating the white supremacists who literally made war on the United States because we were going to take away their slaves.

Almost makes you feel better about Trump -- at least he barely even pretends to give a shit about America, or anything except his grift.