In one of the lapses that might make the naive say “I thought it was called NEWS-week,” this week’s magazine includes an essay by Jonathan Alter on “Packaging Patriotism,” with no disclaimer or indication it’s commentary. Alter constructs a straw man of patriotism, defined as “blind loyalty.” You could also question the “newsy” quality of Alter’s piece, which recycles months-old complaints about the electoral loss of Sen. Max Cleland to whining about the lack of congressional investigations designed to embarrass the president. Alter even mourns that our “Age of Incuriosity” is marked by our failure to live up to the acidulous example of Britain, where Tony Blair’s own party has boiled over with post-war vitriol. Why can’t we repeat that spectacle here?

But the piece gets really silly when it seeks to redefine patriotism at the end:

Maybe all that liberal talk about involving the United Nations wasn’t so squishy and unpatriotic after all, if one believes it’s now a good idea to lose less in blood and treasure in Iraq. Maybe the true patriotism—the best nationalism—is enlightened internationalism, just as presidents from both parties have believed since World War II.

That’s not what Ronald Reagan believed, and the Alter and Friends savaged him for it, as if the U.N. would have ended the Cold War with a victory. Was detente — “enlightened internationalism,” to be sure — the right policy, or a deadly delay in the end of Soviet history?