The American Conservative on the Birthers

Daniel McCarthy and Daniel Larison have a couple of good posts on those (such as Rush Limbaugh) who refuse to accept that Barack Obama was born in the United States. As Larison notes, polls show the birthers are very few in the rest of the county but they are majority in the South.

McCarthy writes

[P]seudo-conservatives already know, without the need for any birth certificate, that Obama isn’t a true American. For them, being an American is not only about being a legal citizen, but about a subscribing to certain beliefs. Knowing that Obama is a de facto un-American, it might make sense (for a paranoiac) to suspect that he’s not a de jure American either.

For the movement Right, being an American means 1.) that you support U.S. military actions, no matter how questionable their strategic, moral, or constitutional grounds; 2.) you support capitalism — that is, corporate capitalism as it exists in the U.S. (if you don’t endorse this kind of economics, you must be a socialist or Communist); and 3.) you’re suspicious of Mexicans, Muslims, and non-British Europeans, especially the French, who are socialists and military weaklings. There might be a fourth item on the list: you ought to drive the most fuel-inefficient vehicle possible.