Conditional patriotism

I've noted before that the patriotism of the left appears conditional upon who's president at a given point in time. Via Hot Air we're provided additional evidence of that.

The hundreds who massed at the University of California [Berkeley, natch. --ed.] campus here on election night responded to Barack Obama's victory by heading off on a route that has been for a generation the sacred way for the activist left: out the campus gates, through Sproul Plaza, and down Telegraph Avenue toward People's Park.

By the time they arrived at the intersection of Telegraph and Durant avenues, where a tie-dye vendor occupies one corner, it became clear they did not come to challenge the system now preparing to consecrate a new regime in Washington. At one point, a man scaled a lamppost and unfurled the Stars and Stripes. The crowd broke out in the national anthem.

"People finally felt like our generation had reclaimed patriotism," said Haley Fagan, 24, a Berkeley paralegal who got stuck in a car trying to cross the street as the crowd surged. "It was a moment that we felt comfortable with it."

After generations of finding their voice in dissidence, some Americans on the left wing are adjusting not only to a new postelection comfort with patriotic symbols, but also to the political reality they represent. Believing in Obama after Inauguration Day will mean identifying with the machinery of U.S. power.

Of course, us knuckle-dragging, slack-jawed wingnuts on the right will continue to be just as patriotic and love our country just as much in another two weeks when Barack Obama is sworn in as president, while in another four or eight years the leftists can go back to hating the country that offers them the freedom to do so. More likely, they'll find out in a year or so that America is still America regardless of who's president and they can go right back to hating it that much sooner.