Putin's biggest fan: the GOP nominee can't stop praising the Russian leader's authoritarianism.

• Author: Sullum, Jacob
• Position: Donald Trump - Column

Hillary Clinton and her running mate, Tim Kaine, used the same word to describe Donald Trump's praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin: "unpatriotic." Satisfying as it may be for Democrats to deploy that adjective against the nominee of a party known for its flag-waving jingoism, it is neither accurate nor adequate in describing what's truly alarming about Trump's admiration of the Russian strongman.

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"He is really very much of a leader," Trump told NBC's Matt Lauer in September. "The man has very strong control over a country."

Trump, who also cited Putin's "82 percent approval rating," allowed that Russia has "a very different system" of government, and "I don't happen to like the system." Nevertheless, he said, "in that system, he's been a leader, far more than our president has been a leader."

Clinton slammed the GOP nominee for "taking the astonishing step of suggesting that he preferred the Russian president to our American president," which she called "unpatriotic and insulting." Kaine said the "irrational hostility toward President Obama, which started the very first day of his term from some of these people, is unpatriotic, and we've got to call it out."

Note how Clinton and Kaine equated Trump's insult to Obama with an insult to the nation. If you hate Obama, they suggested, you hate America.

Teddy Roosevelt, no stranger to jingoism, thought conflating love of country with love of the president is the opposite of patriotism. "To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong," he wrote in 1918, "is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."

Patriotism is in any case a dubious virtue at best. An emotional attachment to the land in which you happened to be born is natural, but when elevated to a moral principle it can easily morph into state worship and warmongering.

The problem with Trump's comments was not that they showed a lack of patriotism. The problem was that they reflected authoritarian instincts no president of a liberal democracy should have.

Trump cannot credibly claim to dislike Russia's system of government while admiring Putin's strong leadership, because that...