U.S. Sen. John McCain jabbed Monday night at unnamed pushers of isolationist politics, saying at his National Constitution Center Liberty Medal ceremony in Philadelphia that abandoning America's role as an international leader is "unpatriotic." 

The six-term Republican senator from Arizona made the remarks after receiving the award for a lifetime of service and sacrifice to the country. In addition to recalling his more than two decades of Navy service and his imprisonment in a Vietnam prisoner of war camp, McCain took a moment to go a step further than the night's other speakers, who lamented what many described as a fractured political climate.