Patriotism vs. Nuance

Bill Whittle is one of my favorite writers. He has put out some really amazing essays on his blog about American exceptionalism, patriotism, the emptiness of the left, etc. (Fair warning--He does occasionally use some rough language.) Just found out he is now writing for National Review and turned out some interesting thoughts about the convention. Read the whole thing--it covers a whole range of issues, from Republican values to Sarah Palin to McCain's time as a POW. But this part brought tears to my eyes:

And a final thing: I had heard before that John McCain had been beaten in prison, and I admired him for it. But when he said he had been broken . . . I gasped. When this sometimes cocky, arrogant old man told me he had once been a cocky, arrogant young man until he was “blessed by hardship,” until he had been broken and remade — and in that remaking discovered a love of country so fierce and pure that even as a patriot myself I will never approach it — well, in that moment John McCain won my heart, to add to the respect and admiration he had already had.

When John McCain told me what I and untold millions of Americans have always believed, what others tell me to be ashamed of and mock me for — that I live in the greatest country in the world, a force of goodness and justice in dark places, a land of heroism and sacrifice and opportunity and joy — to me that went right to the mystic chords of memory that ultimately binds this country together. Some people don’t know what it is, but there is such a thing as patriotism — pure, unrefined, unapologetic, unconditional, non-nuanced, non-cosmopolitan, white-hot-burning patriotism. John McCain loves this country. I love it too. Not what it might be made into someday — not its promise, always and only its promise — but what it was and what it is, a nation and an idea worth fighting and dying for. (italics in the original)

Everything wrong with the left, everything I believe about this country, right there in one paragraph.