Damned if he does, damned if he doesn't...

Kathryn Jean Lopez at National Review Online:

The front page of the Washington Post (yes, I sometimes read paper newspapers) has the headline "Obama Fiercely Defends His Patriotism." Isn't there a problem when a candidate has to "fiercely defend" something so fundamental? Shouldn't a candidate for president and his advisers and supporters exude such a thing?

And perhaps there's also a problem when conservatives declare  - or presume to assume - that they have a monopoly on patriotism, casting their opponents as un-American and demanding that Obama make a grand speech to prove that, you know, he is comfortable being an American citizen...

Not that the GOP, alas, is the only party to behave in such a fashion. One of the more tiresomely witless elements of th SNP is its presumption that it alone "speaks for Scotland", is "Scotland's party" and that anyone who dares question their policies or bona fides is somehow inherently "un-Scottish" and "unpatriotic".

But then again, the "patriotism" American conservatives demand Obama express isn't actually patriotism at all; it's nationalism. Which is something else entirely.