Trump Tower may be a gaudy excess, but it is not the Berghof on stilts by Rex Murphy

12/01/2018

Patriot. Nationalist. These words describe some of the worthiest leaders in history. Churchill was the greatest patriot of his day. Who loved Britain more than he? Lincoln was the ultimate "nationalist." He purged his beloved country of slavery, though the cost was civil war. Read the Gettysburg Address again. It's a love letter, written in deep grief, to the idea of a nation "conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." Pierre Trudeau was a nationalist - he fought separatism to keep the Canadian nation whole.

We're in a strange time, when patriotism is a call to white supremacy, nationalism is a return to Hitlerism, and maintaining national sovereignty is a first step to the Holocaust. The obsessive detractors of President Trump - so consumed with his rough style and rowdy address - outstrip him by miles in both. They look in their mirrors and see Donald Trump. But the mirrors are lying. The faces looking back are their own.