The writer considers several recent cases of lefties who've been labeled anti-American: University of Colorado professsor Ward Churchill, who described victims of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks as "little Eichmanns"; CNN news exec Eason Jordan, who was accused of saying that the U.S. military had deliberately tried to kill journalists in Iraq; as well as two notably vocal critics of the United States, filmmaker Michael Moore and the late writer and intellectual Susan Sontag.

The piece is typical of the Economist in that it combines sophisticated leaning-conservative-but-balanced analysis with a cutting British wit:

Comrades Sontag and Moore would insist that they were opposed to American foreign policy, not America; but, to put it mildly, they were pushing it. They also represent a private tradition on the American left of rubbishing their countrymen as vulgar morons, especially when set alongside sophisticated Europeans. (If you doubt this, don a tweed jacket, assume a British accent, invite yourself to a dinner party in an American university town and wait until the Pinot Grigio takes hold.)

The columnist then makes an interesting point: that "loud-mouth critics of American policy on the right" are hardly ever labeled "anti-American":

The American Conservative is as rude about American imperialism and the Iraq war as the Nation -- but nobody really accuses Pat Buchanan of anti-Americanism. As for dismissing American culture, Mr Moore is less acerbic than one of the right's patron saints, H.L. Mencken. The Public Interest and the New Criterion worry about popular culture. Robert Bork thinks America is slouching towards Gomorrah. Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell agreed that September 11th was a punishment for America's liberalism on abortion and homosexuality. Was that less anti-American than Ms Sontag?

The article draws one central conclusion, that the American left is every bit as patriotic as the right (witness Democrats' draping themselves in the flag at every opportunity). Rather, the thesis here is that the left loves the United States every bit as much as the right; it simply has different reasons for its patriotism:

Liberals think that America has been defined by its commitment to equality of opportunity (hence their worries about cutting inheritance tax); by its commitment to the separation of church and state (hence their worries about faith-based social policy); and by its enthusiasm for human rights (hence their worries about torture). When liberals created People for the American Way, they did not see it as a covert People for the French Way. The real battle-line in the culture wars is not between pro-Americans and anti-Americans; it is between two groups of patriots who have very different ideas about what makes America America (with the regional battle-lines, incidentally, bearing some similarity to those in the civil war).

This carries a warning for two very different sorts of people. The first is anti-American foreigners: they should not take clowns like Mr Moore or Mr Churchill as typical. Americans are a patriotic bunch -- and, for the most part, this patriotism stretches from one end of the political spectrum to the other. The second is the American right. So far, conservatives have played the unAmerican card extremely well; but when it comes to unAmerican purges there is always a danger of overreach.