He gets the best letters:
The great, truly patriotic reformers of American history have the country for what it is despite its flaws, which they dedicated themselves to amending. It’s only of late, under the influence of Marxism and the tumult of the ’60s (perhaps the Kennedy assassination, if you believe that guy’s new book) in which you see large numbers of people expressing the loopy theoretical proposition that you can despise your country out of love for it, which seems to be the bottom line for a lot of petty university-educated intellectuals these days.
Well, yeah, he gets hate mail too. But such is the price of greatness.
But his correspondent is correct: There is something of the abusive authoritarian in that strain of thinking which says, “I will only love you if…”
He hints at Chesterton’s : “You don’t love your country because it is great; your country is great because you love it.” Love in the sense of sacrifice & service. Same could be said for husbands and wives and we also abandon these much too frequently. GKC also said: “My country right or wrong” is like saying “My mother drunk or sober.” And modern utopians screw this up when they beat mother senseless to save her from drink.