There seems little doubt that nuance, subtle thinking and critical insight are well beyond the grasp of Rush Limbaugh. So this piece is not directed at him. But the power of his arguments is real and the force they have in shaping public debate can’t be overlooked. So for that reason alone it seems worthwhile to debunk some of the arguments he made when he attacked the piece I wrote for Salon last week.

The core argument of my piece was that Stephen Colbert’s character from “The Colbert Report” had offered the U.S. public a refreshing alternative to the partisan spin of patriotism so often in play today. As I explained — referring to the research of Geoffrey Nunberg — in past decades, the right has dominated the discourse of what it means to care about this nation. And they have suggested that any questioning of the right is equal to treason. Colbert, I argued, exposed the fallacies of this view and reclaimed patriotism for his fans. A key part of the Colbert persona was his hyper-patriotism, and I pointed out that, as the character was put to rest, it was time to speculate on what this would mean for the future of left-leaning nationalism.

It is perfect irony that Limbaugh does, in fact, accuse me of attacking America. As he puts it, “I can’t escape these professors and these lies and all this crap that’s in the media about everything that’s so-called wrong with America.” This was his response to a piece that indicated that Colbert had encouraged a large fan base to enthusiastically pursue their own version of what it means to be patriotic — one that we might argue has as much, if not more, affinity with the founding principles of our nation than the version offered by the right.

In fact, Colbert’s character often schooled Limbaugh on his understanding of U.S. history. In a bit from March 5, 2009, Colbert shows Limbaugh attacking Obama for supposedly violating the principles of the Constitution only to then quote from it. The quote, though, was from the Declaration of Independence. And Limbaugh actually gets that quote wrong: it is not “life, liberty, freedom, and the pursuit of happiness.” The word “freedom” does not appear there. This leads Colbert to conclude that he is applauding Limbaugh for “changing the Constitution” since “the liberals all want it to be a living document, but Rush took it one step further and made it a Wikipedia entry. He does not care what the Constitution says, which is final proof that he is the true leader of the Republican Party.” So, as Colbert gave his own viewers a lesson in U.S. history, he also showed us that one of the great so-called patriots of the right had his facts wrong.