Over on one of NRO’s other blogs, Mona Charen looks at a poll results showing that while 71 percent of Republicans “completely agree” with the statement “I am very patriotic,” only 48 percent of Democrats did. She concludes, “Democrats do tend to be less patriotic than Republicans. There, I’ve said it out loud.”

Is that a fair statement? Well, I know a slew of Democrats who will be furious over that statement. They’re representing their government overseas, working in the legislative process, working in low-pay, high-aggrivation fields like social work. I wouldn’t call any of those folks “unpatriotic” in a million years.

But I think it is fair to say that Republicans and Democrats — or at least conservatives and liberals - love America for completely different reasons. To quite a few conservatives, religious freedom and the fact that religious life thrives so easily and thoroughly in our nation is a big reason for their love of the USA. Quite a few liberals look at the same phenomenon and see impending theocracy; they see separation of church and state as a big reason to love America. To many liberals, Roe vs. Wade demonstrates that our system defends the right to privacy and “reproductive freedom”, even in the face of popular opinion and potential “tyranny of the masses.” To many conservatives, the judicial fiat of “Roe vs. Wade” is one of the most un-American moments in our history; they would contend that the enormous national grassroots effort to overturn that decision is a reason to be proud.

Here’s where a Kumbayah columnist would say, “Isn’t that what’s great about America? That we can all love our country for different reasons?”

I’m not a Kumbayah columnist, so I’ll say no. It should not be too much to ask from our body politic to agree on some first principles (though not specific policies).

Illustrative example: I was debating immigration with a left-of-center friend. I asked, “what is an American?” This person responded, “well, you come here…” and then had a tough time coming up with other criteria. (Ironically, yes, “here”, as in the location of the conversation, is Turkey.) It should not be too much to expect that left, right and center, an “American” is a citizen, who is either born here or a legal immigrant. We may not have the “blood and soil” identity of Europeans, but the mere fact that you have crossed over into American territory does not make you an American. It is unsurprising that the immigration debate is marked by such passion and vitriol if one side defines “American” as merely a matter of location.

So why would fewer Democrats agree with the statement “I am very patriotic”? Well, I’m reminded of an opinion by Al Franken, that conservatives love America the way a child loves a parent, while liberals love America the way a spouse loves a spouse. (Considering all the complaining he does about the country, one has to wonder what it’s like to be married to Al Franken.) I don’t quite agree with that assessment, but there may be something there. Conservatives - again, generally - look at America and see much of its achievements and beam with pride; liberals generally look at America and see its failures and shortcomings and lament how far we have to go to reach the ideal.

This brings me to Geraghty’s Ironclad Political Rule of the Term “Sheeple.” I recall angry conservatives throwing around the term “sheeple” while discussing President Clinton in the 1990s, as in, “The ignorant, fat, naive sheeple will just nod their heads at whatever Clinton and the biased media tell them.” Today the term is used almost exclusively by the left, contending that the “sheeple” are being lulled into fearful subservience by President Bush, terror alerts, Karl Rove’s Jedi Mind Tricks, Fox News, etc.

Geraghty’s Ironclad Political Rule of the Term “Sheeple”: The political side that is using that term is losing and will continue to lose. The moment you start looking down on voters and losing faith in the (generally) good judgment of voters, you separate yourself as an elitist, and it will show.

So perhaps it’s harder to be patriotic when you’ve lost faith in the judgment of the nation’s voters.

Of course, one of my favorite observations from Cam was, “You know, I always hear liberals complaining that we’re attacking their patriotism. But if they love this country so much, why are they always bitching about it?”