Jeff Jarvis at BuzzMachine takes on anti-Americanism and makes a no-apologies stand against it:

Pardon me, but I'm going to take a very dangerous and contrarian and by some views shrill, right-wing, illiberal stance and I'll take your barbs and the Guardian's with pride: I'm pro-American. Let me say that again, because I am one and because I was attacked and damned near killed because I am one (and yes, that matters): I am pro-American.

This quote came from a previous Jarvis post, but he builds on this thought and expands on it:

Let's be very clear: Just as anti-Semitism led directly to the Holocaust, anti-Americanism led directly to September 11th. Demonizing the people of this country made it acceptable to some and a goal for some to see fanatics murder thousands of us, just as demonizing Jews made it acceptable for fanatics to murder millions of them.

I'm not making a politically correct argument. You can criticize any policy or action of this country or of Israel and you're not by any means anti-American or anti-Semitic.
But once you generalize -- as the two American writers in question did do -- and start calling all Americans stupid and ignorant -- Moore's charges -- and ammoral -- the Newsweek guy's assertion -- you only play into the blind and finally murderous hatred of armed anti-Americans like the ones who came within a few hundred yards of killing me on September 11th.

Jarvis isn't fooling around. Read through this post and the few preceding posts on this topic. Jarvis writes with passion and conviction; hopefully, he will inspire more "pro-Americans" to equal passion and conviction.

UPDATE: Jarvis inspired Steve Glover over at Second Nature to address this issue in a different way, one that also makes a lot of sense to me. Definitely read Steve's take on Jarvis' post. Money quote:

What I like most about being an American though, is that I don't have to be any definition of an American.

Let me rephrase that for absolute clarity: I don't have to be your American.

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