Nothing like using a column by Nooners heaping praise on a book published back in 1900 as an excuse for some hippie punching on the topic of patriotism by the hacks on Fox on Memorial Day. I wish I was kidding, but that was one of the discussions on this Monday's Outnumbered.

Noonan's op-ed, which was published last Thursday was titled "Teach Your Children to Love America," with the subtitle, "For Memorial Day, I’m taking inspiration from the New York schools’ 1900 ‘Manual of Patriotism.’"

Here's how Noonan described the book in her article: "I’ve spent the past few days reading an old book, one that couldn’t possibly be published today because it’s so full of respect for America."

Yes, I'm so sure that "respect" is the only reason it wouldn't be published now Peggers.

Kayleigh McEnany started things off reading from a portion of Noonan's column:

Parents, teach your children to love America, either as an extension of your own love or as a simple kindness to them.
We live in an age—I’ll say this part quickly as we all know it—in which children are instructed in 100 different ways through 100 different portals that America is and always was a dark and scheming place, that its history is the history of pushing people around, often in an amoral quest for wealth but also because we aren’t very nice. And we never meant it about the Declaration. [...]

Parents, help your children love this country. It will be good for them, and more to the point this country deserves it. Also when you don’t love something you lose it. We don’t want that to happen.

Which was followed by this bashing of liberals for being insufficiently patriotic in their view, and attacking Biden for his speech at Morehouse College and accusing him of being the one that wants to divide America, as opposed to the love-it-or-leave-it and don't dare criticize anything the U.S. has ever done crowd we saw on display here.

MCENANY: You know, Tammy, it's such an important point and especially in light of a Gallup poll, and I want to put this up. This is a chart of people who feel extremely or very patriotic and take a look at how it's declined over time. You can see there at once was at a high about 90, 91 percent. This was around 9-11 and we've since fallen to 67 percent, 39 percent in these categories of being very or extremely proud.

It reminds me of Ronald Reagan saying you've got to teach freedom to the next generation.

BRUCE: Yeah, exactly. And I think that when we talk about patriotism, it's not that somebody's been manipulated into not being patriotic, but we see our own government. We make judgments about what are the people that we've hired to do what they're doing. We see the nature of whether freedom of speech is still relevant. If our government cares enough to keep us safe.

It's like we vote for these individuals. We pay our taxes. Is that something that our infrastructure is implementing properly? Like are we just speed bumps on the way for this elite dynamic to live their lives? And part of that is a generation coming into office that really has not, as you've noted, been taught to love the country.

So they move into office thinking, well, when you have a president that says American is going to be fundamentally transformed, that kind of began the open acknowledgment that this nation's got to change.

Well, not up until that point. I mean, obviously we continue, no nation's perfect. We continue to work on becoming a better nation and better people, but it really is the core of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, etc.

And I think for those who we remember today and celebrate today, I think they would trust, as I would in the same situation, that we are going to have their backs and their families' backs and the next generation's backs as we move forward so that those debts aren't in vain.

MCENANY: Yes, and Joe, there was an important point in addition to what we've gone over that the editorial makes, and it's about this insidious ideology that is being taught to young people and oftentimes young people
who are not privileged, who are not born into wealth and privilege, and here's what they said.

They said “To kids from difficult circumstances it means there is no hope; you won’t escape a violent or unhappy family into a better place, the world outside, because it isn’t better. The world outside is America, which brutalizes the minority, the woman, the different. Inside is scary, outside is scarier. What a thing to do to vulnerable kids.” Well said.

[…]

CONCHA: I think a lot of young people may believe this because they have a president who does speeches like the one we heard last week, with Joe Biden, when he said this “You started college just as George Floyd was murdered and there was a reckoning on race. It’s natural to wonder if democracy you hear about actually works for you. What is democracy if Black men are being killed in the street?”

How despicable that speech was, and divisive. There's a good reason why within this poll, when you peel off the onion a little bit, 60 percent of Republicans are very proud of their country, more than half of that, only 29 percent of Democrats are proud of this country, so that's why if you're Donald Trump, be the happy warrior, continue to do an optimistic campaign, as he's been doing lately, and let Democrats tell you how horrible and evil and racist this country is, because it's a losing message.

Of course, missing from the conversation was what life was like for most Americans if you weren't wealthy, male and white when that book was written that Noonan is so enamored with. Conservatives have been playing this game for decades. It's perfectly alright for Republicans to criticize the government and pretend we're living in some hellscape whenever Democrats are in charge, but liberals aren't allowed to say anything and can never be considered true "patriots."

And I don't know what Concha is smoking, but "happy warrior" are the last words I'd ever attribute to Trump these days. Lots of projection from him on that one and who's got a problem with their messaging.

Primary image by Tengrain of Mock Paper Scissors.