Birthers

Although the birthers have somewhat quietened down in recent months I had a couple of thoughts about them the other day.

The easy criticism is to just label them racist, but for most of these people I don't think it's as simple as plain old prejudice (although for some it probably is that simple).

It seems to be part of a broader conservative trend of labling liberalism as somehow un-American. We saw this with the characterization of opposition to the Iraq war as "unpatriotic"; we saw it in the 2008 campaign with McCain's people talking about the "real" Virginia (code for rural and Western); and we see it when tea-baggers say that they "want their country back". This last position resonates particularly strongly with conservatives if they believe that the president is actually a foreigner posing as an American. Just as it was believed that Catholics received secret orders from Rome and communists from Moscow, a malevolent, foreign influence proves that liberal values are not American values.

To me, this helps explain the sudden fealty to the "natural-born-citizen" provision of the constitution. People who probably never even knew of its existence until recently are suddenly acting as though it mattered more than anything.