"America: Love it or leave it".

That phrase, when I first heard it, lo these many years ago, made me understand that there's no talking to some people. How dare one group of Americans say to another that they, and they alone, have the only valid Booke of Ancient and Revered Rules for Being an American? How dare they tell people who have the audacity to hold different opinions than them to leave America? Because of course they did not refer to loving the land, or the communities in which people live, or the Constitution, but to loving the unpopular foreign policy being pursued by the American government of the time. I knew that the people who would say a thing like that to me, or to anyone else, didn't have a clue as to the nature of the American genius for self-examination and hurtling change.

The difference now is that the people who once said that to people like me control the White House and Congress. And almost the Supreme Court.

You're right when you say the hatred goes back farther than Bush. "America: Love it or leave it" is a statement full of self-righteous hatred for dissent and its public expression.