"I'm tired of the notion that patriotism means never being critical of America."

-- an online comment

to CNN from "Sarah L." in Fayetteville, Ark.

No one ever said that, Ms. Sarah.

But patriotism does require not always being critical of America. Or criticizing America first. Or going to foreign lands and criticizing America. Or never saying good things about America.

Somehow, somewhere along the line, Democrats became convinced that the highest form of patriotism is hyper-criticism. Such as when John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, went way overboard in criticizing American troops in both Vietnam and Iraq -- accusing our men, decades apart, of unsubstantiated, broad war crimes.

Now comes 2008 Democratic presidential frontrunner Barack Hussein Obama's wife, Michelle, saying at a rally Sunday that she was proud of her country "for the first time in my adult life."

Come again?

That's quite a statement by the wife of a presidential candidate, Democrat or no.

It reveals a platform of the Democratic Party that's as fundamental as universal health care: self-loathing. It is the heart of liberalism itself. The planet is warming; it must be our fault. Terrorists are attacking us; what did we do to prompt them? We're not liberators or a security force in Iraq; we're occupiers and killers. Some people want the border secure and immigrants to be legal; our country must be racist. We must respect other cultures when visiting other countries, but they needn't respect ours when they come here.

When these kinds of views underlie your belief system, then perhaps it's not surprising that you can claim you've never been proud of your country before.

But for a potential first lady to say that is beyond incredible. What kind of ambassador might she be? Will she agree with foreign criticism of her country? Will she join in?

Even if it's possible that Michelle Obama never saw one thing in her adult life to make her proud of America -- which is astounding in itself -- is there nothing in history that could've made her proud?

We're not perfect in this country; we're quite human. But we're the best thing going. Just consider: While an uneasy separatism grips the Balkans, and Jews and Arabs lob rockets at each other, and Shiites and Sunnis fight for dominance across the Mideast, and African nations and tribes trade atrocities, and on and on and on, America continues to absorb every race, every nationality, every religion.

Michelle Obama may understandably feel the sting of an inglorious racial past in this country. You have to be numb not to feel it. But even so there are things to be proud of in that difficult march. Brown vs. Board of Education. Blacks and whites demonstrating together. A succession of laws prohibiting discrimination. A society that won't brook racist comments in the public domain for a moment -- and a culture that has made a black female talk-show host perhaps the most powerful unelected leader in the free world.

Has Michelle Obama not noticed any of this?

Anyway, she's not the issue. It's a way of thinking -- the same self-loathing way of thinking that led the Berkeley City Council to hate the American military so much it voted to show Marine recruiters the road out of town.

If Michelle Obama or anyone else over the age of 18 can't find one thing to be proud of in this country, they're just not paying attention.

Or they just don't want to admit America is beautiful.

America is the land of tolerance. So we hope Michelle Obama will forgive most of us for being unable to think of one day in our adult lives when we haven't been proud of our country.