There’s a part of me that hears Rush Limbaugh‘s comments about wanting President Obama to fail and reads Bill Kristol‘s cynical advice to Republicans about opposing the Democratic agenda no matter how it affects the public good that wants to turn the tables on conservatives for the past eight years of McCarthyism. The insipid questioning of liberal patriotism was constant, pervasive, and frustrating because of course I love this country. When I think about the reasons I love it most, I think about the Constitution, and the fact that it’s words laid the foundation for the reconciliation of its most lofty ideals. When Barack Obama says that “on no country on earth is my story even possible,” I know exactly what he means. As a biracial Jew of African descent, I know of no other country on earth where I can assert my identity and be recognized as part of a legitimate cultural phenomenon.
I’m simply as uninterested in policing the patriotism of the right as I was in defending my own. I also don’t really care if conservatives who say such things love their country or not–my patriotism is not so fickle that it fades if it is not shared. The fact is that on some level, I do think conservatives who are opposing anything Obama proposes believe that they are acting in the interest of the common good. They believe that expansion of the health care system might create an inordinate amount of dependence on government, or that Obama’s closing of Gitmo and shifts in counterterrorism policy puts the country in danger. I think they’re completely wrong, but I also think that they believe, in the long run, that their opposition to such things is best for the country, even when it appears to me that they’re acting in a narrow partisan interest. Ultimately, I don’t see what questioning conservatives’ patriotism does for the discourse, other than legitimize the practice.
— A. Serwer
