Just in time for the presidential election, two ladies of the GOP have proposed a shocking theory. Sarah Palin says the country is divided into separate regions: "pro-America" and the rest of the nation. Meanwhile Minnesota representative Michelle Bachmann asserts that Congress harbors both pro-American and anti-American members. It follows that the anti-America areas of the nation are electing anti-American members of Congress. Here's the shocking part of the Palin-Bachmann thesis: they are perfectly correct. But which regions and officials are guilty of anti-Americanism? They're not hard to identify.
By definition an anti-American wants to harm his country. There are various ways to do this of course, but one good place to start is with the US Constitution. Here, in one pithy document, is the basis for all of our ideas about liberty and justice, prosperity, equity, and governance. Subvert the Constitution, and you are well on your way to undermining America. You could for example blur the constitutional separation of church and state by spending federal funds on religious groups, even those that discriminate against other religions. You could breach constitutional protections against un-American activities such as spying on the citizenry, torturing prisoners, deploying the tools of justice against political opponents, suppressing the vote, and conducting the business of government in secrecy, by doing all of the above. And these are just a few of the ways the Constitution has been subverted lately.
Next, your dedicated anti-American would seek to embroil the nation in an unnecessary or an incompetently waged war. This would simultaneously drain our treasury, ruin our reputation abroad, destroy our ability to defend ourselves against real enemies, and kill and maim our own citizens. Now consider the effect of embroiling us in two unnecessary and incompetently waged wars at the same time! An anti-American wet dream if ever there was one, if it were not harsh reality.
Finally your truly committed anti-American, aware that U.S. style peace and freedom flourish best in conditions of economic prosperity, would systematically wreck the economy. You'd turn our financial system, the world's most efficient, transparent, and stable, into a shambolic ruin. You'd engineer a catastrophic loss of national wealth by destroying the housing and capital markets. If you could do all that and simultaneously bring economic growth to a halt while driving up unemployment and vastly adding to the national debt – why then, you'd have gone about as far as you could go. Which is just about where we are.
So let's heed Bachmann-Palin and defeat the anti-Americans. Starting with the two ladies themselves, including all of their GOP colleagues, and adding every one of their unrepentant supporters, that should account for every one of them.