Is Barack Obama Anti-American?

Is Barack Obama anti-American? Are Democrats? Are liberals?

These are some of the questions floating around tonight in light of GOP Representive Michele Bachman's appearance on Hardball:

It's best to watch the whole interview to see Chris Matthews trying to pin down Bachmann to name names of anti-American legislators in Congress (and there's certainly a few).

But I'll say right now, though, frankly, Bachmann nails it: She singles out Barack Obama's radical associates one by one: William Ayers, Michael Pfleger, and Jeremiah Wright and tells it like it is. These folks by word and deed can't stand America? Obama himself has gone through a life of ideological contortions and scheming political machinations to get where he is today, which is in hot water for admitting he wants to take the private property of everyday Americans and "spread the wealth."

So, what's the problem? The left goes against center-right values all the time, right?

Oh, it's polically incorrect to allege that Democrats are anti-American? That liberals are anti-American?

It all boils down to definitions and usage. Do Democrats and leftists in overwhelming numbers want to blow up the United States? Absolutely not. But one can be anti-American without wanting to commit terror and treason against U.S. institutions and American citizens.

Anti-Americanism is for all intents and purposes a core element of contemporary left-wing ideology. Leftists do not like what America IS today and what it DOES now - that is, the left hates contemporary American PRAXIS.

The left loves American IDEALS - America's PROMISE - and leftists routinely uses them to excoriate the nation's alleged history of irredeemable racist oppression and xenophobia. These are the same people who look the other way at Ayers' history of unrepentent America-bashing to claim he's rehabilitated. These are the same people who have literally pulled for an American defeat in Iraq - that'll show those damned neocons that they can't just run around the world implanting proconsuls in Third World regimes! These are the same people who want the United Nations to exert sovereign power over American affairs, to rein in American hegemony gone wild.

I checked Google to see if I could come up with any good definitions of anti-Americanism. Most of what I found applied to international opinions of the United States, but Dennis Prager did offer a pretty good first cut of leftist hatred of America today:

Why does the left hate America...?

The answer ... is that ... American success refutes the socialist ideals of the left; American use of force to vanquish evil refutes the left's pacifist tendencies; America is the last great country that believes in putting some murderers to death, something that is anathema to the left; when America is governed by conservatives, it uses the language of good and evil, language regarded by the left as "Manichean"; most Americans still believe in the Judeo-Christian value system, another target of the left because the left regards all religions as equally valid (or more to the point, equally foolish and dangerous) and regards God-based morality as the moral equivalent of alchemy.

Gerhard Baker also had a nice take on leftists and anti-Americanism in the global context:

They want to construct an international system that will for ever prevent the US from pursuing its own objectives, a system designed to dilute, counterbalance and constrain America’s ability to govern itself. They prefer a world in which American democracy is subordinated to a kind of global government, rule by a global elite, tasked to make decisions on everyone’s behalf in the name of multilateralism.

This brings us back to Barack Obama.

Folks should go back and read his Foreign Affairs essay from July/August 2007, "Renewing American Leadership," which includes this nugget:

Today, we are ... called to provide visionary leadership. This century's threats are at least as dangerous as and in some ways more complex than those we have confronted in the past....

These threats demand a new vision of leadership in the twenty-first century - a vision that draws from the past but is not bound by outdated thinking. The Bush administration responded to the unconventional attacks of 9/11 with conventional thinking of the past, largely viewing problems as state-based and principally amenable to military solutions. It was this tragically misguided view that led us into a war in Iraq that never should have been authorized and never should have been waged. In the wake of Iraq and Abu Ghraib, the world has lost trust in our purposes and our principles.

A vision of blame America first...

These lines could have been written by Daily Kos, MoveOn.org, or any of the other Bush-bashing, America-hating leftists intent to tie-down American power like Gulliver and the Lilliputians.

Michelle Bachman is being vilified now because on these issues and more, she represents all that stands in the way of leftist nihilism, totalitarian control, and the radical march to destroy American traditionalism and exceptionalism.

God bless her.