What was revealed was a world of thought in which authentic patriotism and, more specifically, authentic Zionism, were defined by one’s political beliefs. Incorrect political beliefs do not merely signal a lack of Zionism, but active anti-Zionism.* (When the right uses the label “post-Zionist” this is, for all effective purposes, what they mean.) ~J.L. Wall

This is perfectly recognizable as the same structure of belief that Americanists have. Authentic patriotism and authentic Americanness are defined by one’s political beliefs, and incorrect beliefs are taken as evidence of active anti-Americanism. This is construed very, very narrowly so that it excludes not only adherents of “un-American” ideologies, but also everyone outside of a limited range of political and policy views. Indeed, one reason so many Obama critics prefer to accuse him of being “post-American” is that it allows them to impute anti-American hostlity to Obama without being quite so blunt about it. The “post-American” charge is based on most of the same assumptions as the more outlandish “anti-colonial” sort of attacks, but it sounds less absurd. Despite being extremely polemical, it can come across as being merely descriptive.

We encounter this structure of belief most often during debates over foreign wars and national security. One of the interesting, pernicious effects of much of the right’s growing embrace of democratist rhetoric over the last twenty to thirty years is that it has become possible to accuse someone of insufficient attachment to American values for “failing” to support foreign dissidents. To take just one example, consider this passage from the newly-elected Sen. Mark Kirk’s essay on Iran:

As Americans, how can we justify this apparent retreat from human rights? Is the President afraid that public discussions of human rights abuses in Iran will offend the regime and undermine talks over the Iranian nuclear program? If that’s the case, this Administration has lost its way when it comes to our most basic American values.

Kirk is judging administration’s dedication to “basic American values” on the basis of whether or not it has disbursed funding to Iranian dissident groups. Kirk seems to have no notion that direct U.S. funding of Iranian dissidents might actually be harmful for those dissidents by making them appear to be American agents. Three years ago, the National Iranian-American Council was protesting Bush administration democracy funding:

A coalition spearheaded by an Iranian-American group Thursday urged Congress to cut 75 million dollars in funding for democracy promotion in Iran, saying it did more harm than good.

A total of 26 organizations, including the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) and human rights groups, argued there was overwhelming opposition to the program among activists within Iran.

“The money has made all Iranian NGOs targets and put them at great risk,” said Trita Parsi, president of NIAC, which bills itself as the largest Iranian American group in the United States.

“While the Iranian government has not needed a pretext to harass its own population, it would behoove Congress not to provide it with one.”

The activists said that the Iranian government sees the US funding, in a program launched in 2006, as designed to enforce regime change, and conservative leadership elements had used it as a pretext for a crackdown.

In a letter to lawmakers who will merge Senate and House of Representatives appropriations bills containing the funding, the group said the money would be better spent on activities outside Iran to promote civil society.

“We believe this program, intended to aid the cause of democracy in Iran, has failed and has instead invigorated a campaign by conservative regime elements to harass and intimidate those seeking reform and greater openness.”

“Iranian reformers believe democracy cannot be imported,” they wrote.

Kirk doesn’t even attempt to engage with this claim, and I’m fairly sure he would dismiss it out of hand. Like much of the rest of Kirk’s essay, he takes for granted that direct, overt American government support for Iranian dissidents is the best and really only way to lend support to their cause, and more than that he concludes on the basis of this that the “failure” to provide such support demonstrates a lack of “basic American values.” Some of these people are so far gone that they actually believe that the administration is somehow betraying or failing to live up to American values because it is not actively subverting another government on ideological grounds. What makes the accusation that much more odd is that many Iranian dissidents would see the halt to U.S. funding as a desirable development. How could it mean that the administration has “lost its way” concerning basic American values when Iranian democrats don’t want this kind of “help”? Obviously, it can’t, but that won’t stop Kirk and those like him from making support for reckless democratism into a litmus test of what it means to be a true American.

Near the end of his essay, Kirk repeats a couple of overused canards that also deserve some scrutiny:

A dictatorship that murders its own people in the streets on television will not be an honest broker in international affairs. A country that denies its citizens their basic freedoms will not be at peace with its neighbors.

Of course, it is possible for repressive regimes to keep their agreements with other governments, and it often happens that authoritarian regimes are at peace with their neighbors. If Kirk doesn’t want the U.S. to negotiate with Iran on anything so long as it engages in repressive behavior, he can say so, but the one doesn’t actually have much to do with the other. Democratists want to link them because they believe foreign relations should center around using American influence to dictate the internal affairs of other states, but there is no necessary connection between the two things. Internal repression does not have to be associated with deal-breaking or aggression abroad, and governments that mostly do not violate their citizens’ rights do not have to be respectful of international law or peaceful. Indeed, the latter have made a bad habit of breaking international law and starting or escalating wars in recent years, and that has happened partly because shoddy arguments similar to Mark Kirk’s have been taken seriously.