I’M NOT APPENDING THIS to the Chuck Herrick “conditional patriotism” post below, because that one’s already damned long. But reader Bob Kingsbery has some good insight on the topic:

Tell Chuck Herrick that giving up your civil liberties in the war on terrorism would make you a loyalist, not a patriot.

A patriot puts the freedoms and rights America was founded on above everything else.

A loyalist puts America’s leaders and laws above everything else.

Perhaps that’s the real idealogical divide in America right now. Right wingers and left wingers both believe in bigger government and fewer individual freedoms.

Middle of the road liberals, libertarians and moderate conservatives share a belief in limited government and greater personal freedom.

Your thoughts?

I’m not sure I think that’s the biggest ideological divide, but it’s certainly what divides me from Herrick. My loyalty is to the Constitution, not blood and soil. That’s for other kinds of countries.

There are lots of good responses in the comments to the earlier post, but I couldn’t resist adding this one from Andy Freeman:

After all, anyone can say that anything is “in the name of the war”, just as they can claim that anything is “for the children”. However, making such a claim doesn’t make it true.

Similarly, one can suggest sacrifices that will do NOTHING to win the war.

If Herrick disagrees, he’ll have no problems with sending me $100 “for the war”. It’s a small sacrifice that he can easily afford and he doesn’t want to be one of those nasty libertarians.

What? The check is not in the mail? Is it that he doesn’t actually believe his little rant or that it doesn’t apply to him?

A bit mean, perhaps, but nicely illustrative. Or as Suman Palit puts it in another of the comments, “The idea that patriotism involves happily agreeing with every administrative bungle or ineffective beauracratic policy is ludicrous.”