@ Telemachus:

"The Republicans have managed to turn patriotism into mindless goose-stepping and the Democrats have let them. The roots of it are in the Vietnam police action that lasted 14 years."

I would push the roots of mindless patriotism back to 1947 September 18. On that day the Department of War was renamed the Department of Defense. That put us firmly on the Orwellian path by which our government came to refer to the Korean and Vietnam Wars as "police actions" essential to our "defense".

Now, it was a good idea to contain communist aggression. Putting a half million troops into Vietnam turned out to be a bad way to do it. But the height of absurdity in calling "war" "defense" came with the current Iraq War where a justification of "defense" was conjured up out of thin air and sold to the American people with brazen lies. (If Seymour Hersh is credible, then the Republican fall campaign surprise will be war with Iran, justified with new, improved lies.)

My point is that, when our government got into the peacetime Big Lie propaganda business on 1947 September 18, it set us on a path whereby mindless patriotism could be easily exploited by those, like Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and, yes, McCain, with a penchant for militarism. This has been an extraordinarily dangerous development in American history and one which, as the Boiling Frog Syndrome, has gone largely unnoticed.