Just a Few More Minutes

in a Newsweek column about the current state of patriotism.

Perhaps most important, is it patriotic to define patriotism the old-fashioned way—as a kind of narrow nationalism? That jingoistic definition is carrying a price for the president, who must now go on bended knee to allies he so recently scorned. When you’re spending $1 billion a week in Iraq, dissing our friends, as Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld have done consistently, seems to be a tad ... counter-productive. Those “freedom fries” in the House cafeteria are burning us now; those gibes that John Kerry “looks French” don’t look so clever.

The column is good enough that I'll forgive him for opening with a Britney Spears quote.