Paul Cella waxes profoundly at Red State

This guy really lights up his keyboard. I'm impressed...and a bit jealous of his wordsmithing skills.

Wow.

The beguiling sophistry

"I think this intellectual development — the accommodation of the Right to multiculturalism — comprises an important part of the backdrop of the rancorous debates over immigration. For if patriotism is indeed an ideological thing, then all we need to do to assimilate anyone, is inculcate a faith in democracy. We need only teach ideas — uniquely abstract and nebulous ideas — and ask assent to them. But if patriotism is actually a deeper, more mysterious and elusive thing; if it derives not from mental propositions but from habit and custom, from real feelings about real places, from a tender sense of home and hearth, from smells imperceptible but unforgettable, from a thousand attachments subconscious but fierce — then it must be nurtured by the delicate touch of time, by human passion fortified by experience and armed by a just appreciation of what is good and true. If it is not ideology but instead piety, then assimilation becomes a far more difficult thing than we have imagined; and it becomes quite impossible in a climate where the preference for home, which is the root of patriotism, is suspected and vilified."