When it comes to love of country, the only question that matters is this: What kind of love will it be?  Will it be a love based on truth and understanding?  Will it be a love that has depth and meaning?  Or will it be a superficial and fragile love that can not withstand even a whisper of reality?  To love one’s country despite a clear-eyed view of its shortcomings is the mark of a true patriot.  Nothing is achieved through blind admiration – except a stagnation that gives way to an increasingly desperate defense of false nostalgia.  There are those who believe that pointing out the hypocrisy in America’s past and present makes one a traitor, while those who cheer America “right or wrong” are somehow noble.  But willful ignorance or outright denial of the facts is certainly no virtue; and it is contrary to fulfilling the beliefs written in the US Constitution. (more…)