Nationalism vs. Style Guide

Jonah Goldberg took the bait and responded with a bit more on nationalism. I want to say something substantive on the patriotism/nationalism distinction tomorrow. For now, though, let me just observe that if the best the right can come up with in terms of "why do liberals hate America fodder" is old tongue-in-cheek blogposts of mine about historical counterfactuals then I find that a bit sad. Why not just use the Steyn method and use some pseudo-facts?

This week, though, I'm in the midst of my own nationalism moment as I try to bring my manuscript in according with Wiley-approved style. Mostly this involves fixing my charming typos, spelling errors, grammatical screw-ups, or habit of saying "key" seven times on every page. But. Every so often I'll write something like "four American troops were killed" or "American policy requires" or similar. And they, out of what I guess is deference to the delicate sensitivities of our friends south of the border, want that to be all "U.S. troops" and so forth. On this point, at least, I'd happily embrace linguistic unilateralism.

Photo by Flickr user Daveynin used under a Creative Commons license