During a ceremony where he received the Liberty Medal on Monday, Senator John McCain (R-AZ) stated that fearing the world and abandoning the ideas that the US has advanced and the obligations of being an international leader in the name of “some half-baked, spurious nationalism,” is just as “unpatriotic” as holding to any other belief sent to the ash heap of history.

McCain said, “To fear the world we’ve organized and led for 3/4s of a century, to abandon the ideals we have advanced around the globe, to refuse the obligations of international leadership and our duty to remain the last, best hope of earth, for the sake of some half-baked, spurious nationalism, cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems is an unpatriotic as an attachment to any other tired dogma of the past that Americans consigned to the ash heap of history.”

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