I was sitting at lunch with a colleague a few weeks back, and he mentioned that he did not understand the general media hubbub over Michelle Obama's unpatriotic statements.

"So she said that she hadn't been proud of America in her adult life," he said. "So what?"

I answered that many Americans, rightly, were offended at the idea that a prospective First Lady of the United States was not proud of her country. "If you don't believe this is the best country on earth, don't live here," I said.

"That's 'love it or leave it,'" he answered. "I don't have to love everything about this country."

"That's right, you don't," I stated. "But if you don't believe in the essential goodness of America's founding principles -- if you don't believe that those principles constitute the greatest set of essential values ever instituted on a national scale -- then you don't belong here."

He was insulted. The typical liberal talking point states that patriotism is jingoism because America's founding principles are so much claptrap -- that modern values trump those old-fashioned ideas. But that should be an automatic disqualifier for political victory in this country. Disavowing the thoughts underlying the Declaration of Independence and Constitution is a tragic surrender to nihilism, a surrender to the barbarism of the French Revolution.

Liberals often ask for a definition of American values.

Let's begin with what such values are not. They are not the "evolving standards of decency" of Justice Anthony Kennedy. And they are certainly not the vague prescriptions of Barack Obama, who preaches unity but never explains precisely which Americans values are supposed to unify us.

They are the values held in common by John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. They are the values shared by James Madison, Benjamin Franklin and George Washington. Here are some of those values: Continued...