Conservatives: Everyone is Anti-American
Jonathan Allen reports for CQ that conservative legislators are seeing anti-American plots everywhere these days:
House Democrats, a Los Angeles Superior Court official and Columbia University are among the entities Republican lawmakers have described as “anti-American,” “anti-American power” or “anti-American military” on the House floor in the current Congress.
Amid a backlash against Republicans who have challenged their colleagues’ loyalty to America or Americans on the campaign trail, a review of the Congressional Record reveals that similar rhetoric has been in use in the House chamber, as well.
In particular, the term “anti-American” has been hurled freely in floor debates by a pair of junior GOP stalwarts, Reps. Virginia Foxx and Ted Poe .
Poe stops short of calling colleagues anti-American, reserving that for institutions and individuals outside of Congress, but Foxx has angered Democrats by aiming the epithet at them.
The question, to me, is if Barack Obama wins and Democrats expand their majorities in the House and the Senate, does that show that America itself has become anti-American?
38 Responses to “Conservatives: Everyone is Anti-American”
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October 23rd, 2008 at 11:01 am
It does indeed. It means, in fact, that America has become the most anti-American institution in all of America.
October 23rd, 2008 at 11:01 am
Does this phenomenon exist in other countries?
October 23rd, 2008 at 11:06 am
What kills me is that Dems/Blues just sit there and either (a) take it, or (b) bitch about the meanness of the language. For gawd’s sake, the Republican base sits in the only region of the country to commit wholesale treason. Why can’t the Blues play the nationalism card? The Republicans just spent eight years wrecking the country. It doesn’t seem like it would be the hardest argument in the world to make.
October 23rd, 2008 at 11:07 am
No, it proves that the election was stolen.
October 23rd, 2008 at 11:07 am
America is anti-American out of false consciousness. Unfortunately, that term was invented by a Hungarian Marxist, so it’s also anti-American. I think we’re stuck.
October 23rd, 2008 at 11:11 am
What changed all of a sudden to cause these attacks on Democrats to suddenly become counter-productive? And why is this considered an outrageous attack only now?
Or did the first rumblings of these attacks years ago simply embolden Republicans to become more and more blatant and loud about them because they thought they couldn’t be touched?
October 23rd, 2008 at 11:17 am
there was an Onion piece a while back with the headline, “80% of Americans now Anti-American”.
October 23rd, 2008 at 11:26 am
if Barack Obama wins and Democrats expand their majorities in the House and the Senate, does that show that America itself has become anti-American?
Yes. It becomes an annex of Russia via Alaska.
October 23rd, 2008 at 11:26 am
When Nixon was calling Helen Gehagen-Douglas a “Pink Lady”, there was at least an appropriately scary boogeyman, the USSR. They had genuinely placed moles in high ranking positions in western governments. There was at least a modicum of justification for his scare tactics.
Now, we have terrorists instead of communists. It’s just ridiculous on the face of it that anyone running for office is a terrorist sympathizer. You get a fair number of whacko true-believers who will go along with that nonsense, but they represent a club most people don’t want to join.
October 23rd, 2008 at 11:30 am
This is an interesting question, because I think 4 years ago many people thought America was anti-American. I certainly did.
Preventive war, torture, illegal search and seizure, grossly limiting citizens’ ability to protest, those things are all un-American to me and yet they seemed to be favored by a majority of Americans. So at the very least most Americans were in favor of un-American values.
I mean it’s all just too confusing to parse. I guess the difference is that Republicans seem to assert that Democrats or whoever else actively wants America to fail. Whereas Democrats assert Republicans hold un-American beliefs and values?
October 23rd, 2008 at 11:33 am
In response J’s question: yes and no.
Here in Canada, you would never hear anyone label their ideological or political opponent as flat-out “anti-Canadian”. Having said that, it’s common for Liberals to attack Conservatives as being out of touch with Canada’s values. In particular, it’s common for Canadians on the left to accuse the right of being too aligned with American conservatism. This was part of Liberal prime minister Paul Martin’s strategy in the 2006 election where Conservative Stephen Harper drove him out of power. However, I would argue that these sorts of accusations tend to be about dismissing conservatives’ views, rather than suggesting that conservatives are themselves disloyal (which is what “anti-Canadian” would imply).
On the other hand, I grew up in the Arab Middle East, where a charge of being “pro-Western” or “under Western influence” or “part of a Western agenda” would be the rough equivalent of a charge of being “anti-American” in the United States. The implication there is not just criticizing the person’s views, but impugning their motives.
October 23rd, 2008 at 11:40 am
“Captain Black knew he was a subversive because he wore eyeglasses and used words like panacea and utopia, and because he disapproved of Adolph Hitler, who had done such a great job combating un-American activities in Germany.”
Catch-22, 1961
October 23rd, 2008 at 11:44 am
The question, to me, is if Barack Obama wins and Democrats expand their majorities in the House and the Senate, does that show that America itself has become anti-American?
According to Boston’s Jay Severin, yes. In fact, in order to protect and preserve the Constitution, loyal and patriotic Americans should serve as a government in exile and oppose from day 1 their Constitutionally elected president.
October 23rd, 2008 at 11:45 am
you mean, everyone ELSE is anti-american?
October 23rd, 2008 at 11:48 am
The problem with the Reich is they are losing the election across the board whether it be the W.H. or a congressional seats because they don`t want everyone to have a slice of their pie, they are the anti-Americans here.Health care for everyone and a fair tax and an infrastructure that will help rebuild what they destroyed.They are just pressing one of their 14 points of fascism and the rest are soon to come if they aren`t here already with the corporatocracy running our country, controlled Mass media(MSM) and National Security to name a few, talk about being UN-American, what a bunch of HYPOCRTES.
October 23rd, 2008 at 12:07 pm
What these folks really mean is that their America is becoming marginal. This would be funny except people don’t gladly jump onto the trash head of history; witness the Confederate revolution against industrialism and mass society.
October 23rd, 2008 at 12:18 pm
The question I have is if over half of America wind up voting for the anti-American party, does that mean being American will become the new anti-America?
October 23rd, 2008 at 12:18 pm
You know, we used to make jokes from time to time out here on the lefty internets with the question “Why Does the Right Hate America?”, whenever we caught some rightist criticizing something about this country. It was just supposed to be an ironic comeback to a charge frequently made against the left. But now I’m coming to think that much of the contemporary right really does hate America.
I know a guy who is really big on criticizing all of his political enemies as “subversives” or “communists”, and remarking their deficiencies in the area of country-love. But you know, I have never heard this man utter a single world that I would say expressed “love for America”. I’ve never heard him even express like for America – you know, something that starts off with, “You know what’s a pretty cool thing about this country? … ” He frankly seems to despise American culture almost across the board, and to dislike most Americans.
A lot of rightists define America as neither the physical place outlined on maps and names “America”, nor the political community that exists in that physical place, nor the mental or spiritual landscape of an actual, real country. They appear to use “America” to refer to some mysterious distilled essence whose last stocks are being kept in some bunker in Idaho or Mississippi. As for the real country that actually exists in the place where they wish their imaginary country existed instead? They hate that real country.
October 23rd, 2008 at 12:22 pm
This would be funny except people don’t gladly jump onto the trash head of history; witness the Confederate revolution against industrialism and mass society.
Meh. We’re talking about people who bravely opposed the Vietnam War by arguing about it in Dartmouth debate club.
Their allies are people who get paid to whine about taxes on the radio.
I’m not too worried about their internet flailing tearing apart the country.
October 23rd, 2008 at 12:43 pm
Re: witness the Confederate revolution against industrialism and mass society.
If you want a ‘revolution against industrialism and mass society’ you’d do better to look at the history of some of the Latin countries. There was nothing remotely romantic or revolutionary about the Confederacy, and I don’t understand why some conservatives imagine there was. Their ‘revolution’ was about slavery, pure and simple. They would have been only too happy to industrialize if they could have discovered a way- as Hitler, Stalin and the South Africans did- to use slave labor in modern industry.
October 23rd, 2008 at 12:57 pm
“Their ‘revolution’ was about slavery, pure and simple. They would have been only too happy to industrialize if they could have discovered a way- as Hitler, Stalin and the South Africans did- to use slave labor in modern industry.”
It was closer than you might think. While slavery isn’t usually profitable in most industries, it could work in mining. The western territories aquired from Mexico were likely to have been able to sustain slave-labor mining operations for decades. Confederate apoogists like to claim that slavery would have ended soon anyway, but it is not likely. It would have become even more brutal than ever.
October 23rd, 2008 at 1:12 pm
#20-21: There are revolutions of the Right as well as the Left. The Confederates thought of their revolution as a return to the values of the Founding Fathers, instead of merely being a rebellion against an uncongenial change in society. This is not to mention that they had convinced themselves that they had a legitimate right to secession; not that you’re going to find it in the Constitution.
October 23rd, 2008 at 1:25 pm
I actually got a jury summons to Ted Poe’s court back when he was a judge. He ran a nice, friendly voir-dire for someone who turned out to be such an asshole of a politician (I wasn’t chosen for the jury, number was too high).
October 23rd, 2008 at 5:38 pm
Yes, to some extent these Rightists are in fact rational actors. Their “America”—white, “Christian”, and made of authoritarian fail, is in fact threatened by us, loosely construed. Each side believe that we believe in the good parts of the American legacy, though only our side seem to believe that improvement on that seems possible.
October 23rd, 2008 at 8:07 pm
(after Brecht)(!)
After the election of 2006
The editors of National Review
Had posts online at The Corner
In which it was said that the people
Had lost the confidence of the government
And could win it back only
By redoubled efforts.
In that case,
Would it not be simpler
If the government
Dissolved the people
And elected another?
Though, of course, as Matt will I am sure point out, took place in a parliamentary system; in the American system nobody can dissolve anything, and you just have to wait till an election happens along, you poor bastards.
October 23rd, 2008 at 9:23 pm
There probably are faculty at Columbia who could accurately be described as anti-American.
October 24th, 2008 at 7:11 am
indeed, the white haired lady in the photo is Auntie America!
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