McCain vs the thug in The White House

McCain: Half-baked, spurious nationalism is unpatriotic

A pretty frank blast at the soft nazism of the Buchananite, Bannonite Trumptists from a man not at all inclined to just curl up and die.

A defense of American globalism from World War Two to our own time.

Too, his speech reminds us how many in the nation's leadership classes have paid the blood tax in person, as well as familially, over the years.

We [he and Joe Biden, who presented him the award] didn’t always agree on the issues. 

We often argued – sometimes passionately. 

But we believed in each other’s patriotism and the sincerity of each other’s convictions. 

We believed in the institution we were privileged to serve in. 

We believed in our mutual responsibility to help make the place work and to cooperate in finding solutions to our country’s problems. 

We believed in our country and in our country’s indispensability to international peace and stability and to the progress of humanity. 

. . . .

We are blessed, and we have been a blessing to humanity in turn. 

The international order we helped build from the ashes of world war, and that we defend to this day, has liberated more people from tyranny and poverty than ever before in history. 

This wondrous land has shared its treasures and ideals and shed the blood of its finest patriots to help make another, better world. 

And as we did so, we made our own civilization more just, freer, more accomplished and prosperous than the America that existed when I watched my father go off to war on December 7, 1941.

To fear the world we have organized and led for three-quarters of a century, to abandon the ideals we have advanced around the globe, to refuse the obligations of international leadership and our duty to remain “the last best hope of earth” for the sake of some half-baked, spurious nationalism cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems is as unpatriotic as an attachment to any other tired dogma of the past that Americans consigned to the ash heap of history.

We live in a land made of ideals, not blood and soil. 

We are the custodians of those ideals at home, and their champion abroad. 

We have done great good in the world. 

That leadership has had its costs, but we have become incomparably powerful and wealthy as we did. 

We have a moral obligation to continue in our just cause, and we would bring more than shame on ourselves if we don’t. 

We will not thrive in a world where our leadership and ideals are absent. 

We wouldn’t deserve to.

Trump warns McCain after senator’s blunt speech

President Trump on Tuesday issued a warning shot after Republican Sen. John McCain questioned “half-baked, spurious nationalism” in America’s foreign policy, saying “people have to be careful because at some point I fight back.”

Trump said in a radio interview with WMAL in Washington, “I’m being very, very nice but at some point I fight back and it won’t be pretty.”

McCain: 'I’ve faced far greater challenges' than Trump's threats