<i>Postwar liberalism has defined love of country differently. It calls for candidly identifying what's wrong with America in order to improve it.</i>

Obviously, examining one's mistakes is critical to fixing them. However, liberals often go about this the wrong way, relentlessly focusing on the negatives while either ignoring or denying the enormous number of positives, while often hurling accusations of bad-faith and ulterior motives upon anyone who disagrees with them. In doing such, they paint an entirely false and very negative picture of America that feeds anti-Americanism abroad, and endangers us all.

While more moderate liberals (including most mainstream politicians) avoid doing this to some degree, the issue I hold them to blame for is their lack of criticism of the wing-nuts in their own party who do spew this garbage. Far more left-leaning centrists need to look at fools like Michael Moore, Rosie O'Donnell and the like and tell them unequivocably that they are an embarrassment to the country and morons to boot. Unfortunately, I see little indication that this will ever happen.

Exactly. I mean, even Bush told Robertson and Falwell to shut up after they made those stupid comments after 9/11.

One side usually tells their wingnuts off and the other side just seems to embrace them (unless it's more efficient to suddenly throw them under the bus to make themselves look better).

The problem is ineffective GOP governance. The Right wing nuts really drive me away from any GOP support. At least lefties support the constitution, worry about the environment.

The only problem with liberal's patriotism is it is to complex for the the conservative mind to understand.

Multiculturalism leads to moral relativism, where we are all relatively equal. With moral relativism, one cannot rationally say that liberal democracies are better than monarchies, tribal governments or communists, or that America is a great nation worth defending and loving.

In order, to love one’s self, one must have a belief that one’s culture is good. When all is morally relative there is no self-identity to love. Basically, one must love oneself, to defend oneself. And in order to defend the US, a citizen needs to love America. Besides irrational tongue-twisting definitions of how criticizing America is in reality loving America, there is no way that a liberal (indoctrinated into moral relativism) can ever love his/her nation much as a conservative.

Not only that, moral relativism is simple minded. While a leftist hates McDonald because of their elitist feelings (everything corporate is bad), some on the right will defend McDonalds without much thought (everything American is good). However, it is the mentally-complex, fiscal conservative who can see that under certain circumstances McDonalds provide a damn fine meal along with being a job-providing, economy-expanding business. To the left, American businesses are owl destroying oppressors, where to a patriot; businessmen are to be respected for the good they produce.Patriots love successful productive Americans; lefties love sharks first, and then Marxist sanctioned victims.

LOL the 'mentally complex' fiscal conservative. What an oxymoron!

@ ladykrystyna:

"One side usually tells their wingnuts off and the other side just seems to embrace them..."

You are truly immune to irony, aren't you? The hard-core Right has embraced the biggest wingnut of them all, George W. Bush. The other 75% of the country is telling Bush off, as is indicated by all the polls.

Ralph! What a full load of crock.

If I get your gist, all these "others" in America spoil our ability to love our country, since multi-culturalism deprives us of our identity.

Only conservatives really love America .

Liberals hate McDonalds because they hate corporations (not just because they hate McDonalds? - yes, that's a damn fine meal they provide.....)

Liberals are simple minded.

Liberals criticize America, therefore they should be.........what; whipped, deported, ignored, belittled, killed?

Whew! I guess you straightened us out on a number of points.

You sound bright enough, but what you say is crap. Where do you get these ideas?

This is why you shall lose the next election, because the Bush administration has demonstrated where conservative thinking leads, and most of us don't like it at all. You, unfortunately, still mouth all the distractions that conservatives have plied for the last twenty-five years that have worked to get them elected. But even many Republicans can see now that conservatives have almost nothing to offer any more. You have ruined the country that you love so much.

Ralph, I don't want to continue this slew of critical postings about your comments, but one part (your main point, I think) hit me:

And in order to defend the US, a citizen needs to love America.

The liberal strategy is defending the important part of the America, the ideals. The Conservative strategy seems to defend the land..... fine, the land is important too, but it won't be worth defending without those ideals. And that does leave us all less time to defend McDonald's, but McDonald's, honestly, can defend itself. Free market right?

pwoxby:

@ ladykrystyna:

"One side usually tells their wingnuts off and the other side just seems to embrace them..."

You are truly immune to irony, aren't you? The hard-core Right has embraced the biggest wingnut of them all, George W. Bush. The other 75% of the country is telling Bush off, as is indicated by all the polls.

Actually, if you spend any time actually listening to conservative talk radio and reading articles on conservative web sites, including the Comments, you would find many Hard-Core Right people NOT agreeing with everything Bush does. In fact, in many ways, he's not much of a real fiscal conservative and that ticks many people off on the Right.

See, I do understand that there are variances on the Left and on the Right. But I don't hear too many lefties actually smacking down the wingnuts on their side unless it's politically expediant. How long was Obama going to listen to the hate speech coming from Rev Wright before he decided hanging with him was not such a great idea? I still haven't really heard him say that much of what Rev Wright has to say is hateful and divisve.

But, as I've said, Bush basically told Robertson and Falwell to shut up and he wasn't running for President at the time.

Bush is hardly what I would consider a wingnut. He's barely really conservative at all, especially fiscally (with his "compassionate conservatism [read: taxes for programs supported by Republicans] and No Child Left Behind, that's hardly really conservative).

Robertson and Falwell's comments were "wingnut" and Bush called him out for it.

If you have an example that actually goes against what I said, than I'd be happy to admit it.

Cheers.

GETASHRUBERY:

The problem is ineffective GOP governance. The Right wing nuts really drive me away from any GOP support. At least lefties support the constitution, worry about the environment.

Except for the 2nd Amendment of course. But I would hardly call it "support". It's more like how can we tweak it without making an amendment so it can say what we want it to say.

KHpoliticalinnuendohere:

Ralph, I don't want to continue this slew of critical postings about your comments, but one part (your main point, I think) hit me:

And in order to defend the US, a citizen needs to love America.

The liberal strategy is defending the important part of the America, the ideals. The Conservative strategy seems to defend the land..... fine, the land is important too, but it won't be worth defending without those ideals. And that does leave us all less time to defend McDonald's, but McDonald's, honestly, can defend itself. Free market right?

Um, yes the Conservatives do also try to defend ideals, it's just different ideals.

Conservatives defend the ORIGINAL framers ideal of LESS GOVERNMENT and no strong federal, central power.

Liberals defend a more modern idea of MORE GOVERNMENT and strong, central federal power.

See, if you don't really understand what the other side is about, how can you really criticize it?

...shouldn't throw stones, Sakura. Liberals have Michael Moore and Rosie O'Donnell but conservatives have Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson and their ilk, who have attempted to blame 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina on homosexuals, called for the assassination of foreign leaders, etc. The difference is that Moore and O'Donnell have zero standing in the Democratic Party and are courted by Democratic candidates in only the rarest aof instances, while McCain has backed off earlier criticism of them and Republican Presidential candidates from Nixon to Bush openly courted their approval.

When I see a Republican run for President saying, as McCain once said, that religious whack-job conservatives are "agents of intolerance," I'll listen to you. But in point of fact McCain got himself into a lot of trouble with conservatives for saying that, and like the stand-up guy he no longer is, he has backed off of it.

It isn't the job of those who speak for the majority of EITHER party to be responsible for those on its fringes. Your candidate isn't running against Michael Moore, he's running against Barack Obama. Stop trying to pretend otherwise.

Lady,

I read your portion above about not agreeing with Bush and his policies and am happy you feel that way. He is the "conservative" president today, so I consider him the leader of conservative politics and thus gave that little jab at conservative ideals. He does not stand for, nor exemplarize, your claim that the ORIGINAL framers had in mind. (And here's an unhappy revelation, perhaps our social system isn't quite the same as when our ORIGINAL framers were around - as morally wrong as slavery was, it was quite a boost to the economy, and let me add this up now....yes, a stronger economy allows for less governmental influence.)

In the same vein, I don't agree with some of the ludicrous centralizations of power and poorly thought out policies advocating "BIG" government. So we both have our skeletons on the right and the left. It's just that your skeleton is the president.

Instead of putting words in lefties/righties mouths, why don't we discuss how the candidates defined partiotism over the weekend. To wit:

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