I don't buy any of your examples as legit. The problem is that in each case the person who is playing the "you're unpatriotic" card is making an assumption that the other person's motive is not for benefiting America. Opposing colonization, unpatriotic, or does the person think that American values are inconsistent with colonization? Favoring colonization, unpatriotic, or the person just thinks that colonization will benefit America?
Lack of patriotism is an assumption that should never be made of a fellow American UNLESS the person in question makes it explicit and obvious. Even in your last example, I would say that person is greedy and not doing his part, but that isn't the same thing as hating America. That kind of assumption is a stretch.
The truth is that the right and left have different conceptions of patriotism, but playing this card is cheap demogagery and any progressive who endorses it, after republicans have been using it shamelessly in elections for as long as they have, is guilty of major hypocrisy.
- wolf
Again, I agree with you to a point - I do think that unpatriotic is an attack used excessively, casually, wrongly. I do think many mistake a difference of opinion with the motive of a lack of patriotism.
Ineeed I know this more than many insofar as I often advocate that people remember they are a member of the human race before a natiionaly - a view some view as conflicting with patriotism. I don't.
But I draw the line sooner than you. Hitler could be said to be a German patriot because he was doing what he thought German was really about - even while he felt only a few Germans were 'real' Germans.
Benedict Arnold could be said to be a patriot to the colonies - if he had come to feel that remaining British subjects was the best thing for them (although this does not seem to be the case).
Certainly, there's room for people whose views result in harm to the nation are patriotic in their motive.
But there's a point at which the person is putting bad motives ahead of the well being of society.
If a person does something that makes them more money with an attitude of "this is bad for the people of country, but tough crap, that's the free market, who cares", a case can be made that's not patriotic.
The case I say is pretty clearly unpatriotic - a rich person who illegally evades their share of taxes - you finally say 'might' start to be. My point of not paying their fair share for the good of the country putting their own profit ahead of any concern for the nation is a pretty cloear contradiction, you refer to as 'so he put his own wealth ahead of the nation to the point of breaking the law, what's the big deal' is how it looks to me.
So, again, I agree with you on what I view as your main point, but I think you are too broad with it.
Were the Bushes unpatriotic when the grandfather had his bank seized for laundering money for the Nazi leadership? Was George W. Bush unpatriotic for advocating war in Vietnam but evading it himself?
You equate 'not patriotic' with 'hating the country'. I don't. The latter is more extreme.
But it is far overused as a lie and a debasing attack in our political system.
I was just reading today about a Republican who came up with some vicious, dishonest attack ads about Democrats being 'soft on communism in the USSR' and ran them against six Democratic Senators in the midwest in the 80's - and four of them lost. We know Nixon's campaignfor the US Senate against the femal incumbant called her 'the pink lady' as an insinuation about communism. There's a long history of abuse.