Patriots known by the way they live their lives

To the editor:

I take great exception to David Limbaugh's thesis that "certain journalists and academics" find the flag repugnant.

Although I consider myself fortunate to have been born in the United States, I have never bought nor displayed the flag nor any of the pseudo-patriotic trash with which too many of my fellow citizens are festooning their bodies, cars and places of business.

Patriotism is an attitude, not a decorating choice.

Can Limbaugh not see how pitiful it is for one to be reduced to proclaiming oneself to be a patriot rather than to wait to be judged to be such by one's fellow citizens on the basis of the way one lives one's life?

Since such showy patriotism is the stock-in-trade of any country's conservatives, I expect not.

DONN S. MILLER

Tamms, Ill.