O'Rourke Visits Top Gun

P. J. O'Rourke writes funny, and does it well enough to make a living at it, which is far more than I can do. Go see his 24 Hours on the Big Stick article from The Weekly Standard. It concerns a visit O'Rourke made to the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt. The "big stick" makes reference, of course, to TR's international relations maxim about walking softly and carrying a big stick. O'Rourke writes to remind us that John McCain's day job, before politics, was as a carrier pilot:

Some say John McCain's character was formed in a North Vietnamese prison. I say those people should take a gander at what John chose to do--voluntarily. Being a carrier pilot requires aptitude, intelligence, skill, knowledge, discernment, and courage of a kind rarely found anywhere but in a poem of Homer's or a half gallon of Dewar's.

And then there is his evaluation of the campaigns of Clinton and Obama:

They're not just running against the hero John McCain, they're running against heroism itself and against almost everything about America that ought to be conserved.

If you can read this all the way to the end without choking up a little, you have a much thicker callus over the spot in your heart labeled "patriotism" than I do.