I love this word. From the Urban Dictionary. I agree with most of this definition, but sadly I would say that most liberals I know are also patriotards just like this. You simply cannot oppose US foreign policy in the United States. If you oppose our foreign policy, that means “you hate America.”
And most liberals will tell you that too, just like conservatives. Most liberals I know support US foreign policy 100%. They seem to support it more when a Democratic President is in power, but they support most foreign policy under Republicans too. And when they oppose foreign policy, they are often quiet about it, as if they are frightened and ashamed. My father was an ADA liberal, but he backed US foreign policy 100%, in all of its most crazy and reactionary forms. He hated the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and he supported the US armed coup that removed Aristide from power in Haiti. He even supported that Bush’s insane Iraq War and he tried to start a fistfight with me over it, calling me a traitor.
I will say that he turned against the Vietnam War, but he waited until 1968 to do so like most antiwar types. My father was what you call a “Cold War Democrat.” They are and were much more common than you think.
The common line that Republicans say that liberals hate America and especially that they hate US foreign policy does not appear to be true.
Most liberals support the Democratic Party, and their foreign policy is about as horrible as the Republicans’. This is something called “the bipartisan foreign policy consensus” that was put in after World War 2, mostly by Harry Truman and one of the worst Americans of the last century, a Democrat named John Foster Dulles, who singlehandedly launched and maintained the Cold War.
It was Dulles who set in stone the crazy US policy that if you were not with the US, by default, you were with the USSR. You’re with us or against us. This ended up labeling much or all of the Nonaligned Movement as Soviet supporters and fellow travelers. Dulles was a monster and set off 45 years of diabolical US foreign policy, which by the way did not change even 1% with the fall of the USSR.
The standard US liberal argument was that the US did a lot of bad things during the Cold War, but we had to because if we did not, the Soviets would have taken over that country. This implied that with the fall of the USSR, we would finally be forced to stop acting so bad and could go back to being the World Nice Guy that liberals think we are.
However, when the Wall came down, US foreign policy was exactly the same as it was during the Cold War which implies that all of our wickedness came not from a realpolitik Cold War with the USSR but instead derived directly from US imperialism acting on behalf of US capitalism in the form of the US corporations and the elite rich.
By the way, most US liberals that I have met defend US imperialism. They tell me that “a lot of US investment dollars are at stake” in various countries, and that is apparently why we have to be so reactionary and vicious when we stage coups, launch revolutions or assassinate foreign leaders, usually for doing something like raising the minimum wage.
Yes that is correct. The US staged coups in Haiti and Honduras in the past 20 years. The reason for the coups? Aristide and the Honduran President both raised the minimum wage. Apparently according to US bipartisan foreign policy, raising the minimum wage means you are a Communist. I swear to God this country is nuts.
The only people who qualify as “America-haters” are Leftists like me who truly do oppose the Elite/Corporate Fake Managed Democracy and its imperial, reactionary foreign policy. If opposing such things makes me an America-hater, then I guess I am an America-hater. If that’s the definition of the word, I would say that a lot more Americans ought to sign up to be America-haters.
Urban Dictionary patriotard:
An American who is easily manipulated by appeals to superficial pro-American sentiment. Is often a jingoist and rarely if ever opposes any US military action; dismisses all who oppose such military action as liberals or Un-American.
Typically rejects out of hand any criticism of his country’s foreign policy, no matter how justified, unless the criticism is that America isn’t being ‘tough’ enough in some way. Confuses support for the people and/or the founding values of his country with support for his country’s government, especially if his political party of choice (almost always the Republican Party) is in power.
Uncritically swallows propaganda and slogans representing the above mindset – for example: America is ‘Hated For Our Freedoms’ and the troops are ‘Fighting For Our Freedoms’.
Tends to place far greater importance on the trappings of patriotism (American flags, etc.) than on protecting the Constitution or upholding America’s founding values.
Worships the US military. Often a Fox News fan.
