Recently, those who have criticized the actions of the U.S. Government... have been called “anti-American.”...The term “anti-American” is usually used by the American establishment to discredit... its critics. Once someone is branded anti-American, the chances are that he... will be judged before they are heard, and the argument will be lost in the welter of bruised national pride.But what does the term “anti-American” mean? Does it mean... that you’re opposed to freedom of speech?... That you have a quarrel with giant sequoias?...that you don’t admire the hundreds of thousands of American citizens who marched against nuclear weapons, or the thousands of war resisters who forced their government to withdraw from Vietnam?...that you hate all Americans? This sly conflation of America’s culture, music, literature, the breathtaking physical beauty of the land, the ordinary pleasures of ordinary people with criticism of the U.S. government’s foreign policy (about which, thanks to America’s “free press”, sadly most Americans know very little) is a deliberate and extremely effective strategy. To call someone “anti-American”, indeed to be anti-American, (or... anti-Indian or anti-Timbuktuan) is not just racist, it’s a failure of the imagination. An inability to see the world in terms other than those the establishment has set out for you... If you don’t love us, you hate us... If you’re not with us, you’re with the terrorists.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "Recently, those who have criticized the actions of the U.S. Government... have been called “anti-American.”...The term “anti-American” is usually used by the American establishment to discredit... its critics. Once someone is branded anti-American, the chances are that he... will be judged before they are heard, and the argument will be lost in the welter of bruised national pride.But what does the term “anti-American” mean? Does it mean... that you’re opposed to freedom of speech?... That you have a quarrel with giant sequoias?...that you don’t admire the hundreds of thousands of American citizens who marched against nuclear weapons, or the thousands of war resisters who forced their government to withdraw from Vietnam?...that you hate all Americans? This sly conflation of America’s culture, music, literature, the breathtaking physical beauty of the land, the ordinary pleasures of ordinary people with criticism of the U.S. government’s foreign policy (about which, thanks to America’s “free press”, sadly most Americans know very little) is a deliberate and extremely effective strategy. To call someone “anti-American”, indeed to be anti-American, (or... anti-Indian or anti-Timbuktuan) is not just racist, it’s a failure of the imagination. An inability to see the world in terms other than those the establishment has set out for you... If you don’t love us, you hate us... If you’re not with us, you’re with the terrorists." in the context of "Arundhati Roy: Come September, Speech at the Lensic Performing Arts Center, Santa Fe, NM, USA (29 Sep 2002)." to mean that wisdom is timeless.