Christopher J. Scalia

In an emotional moment during his speech at the Islamic Society of Baltimore on Wednesday, President Obama described the sense of alienation felt by young Muslims in America. “And the notion that they would be filled with doubt,” he said, “questioning their places in this great country of ours ... that’s not who we are.”

The moment’s power relied on that final string of words: “that’s not who we are.” It’s a staple of his rhetoric. Regarding Syrian refugees, he tweeted: “Slamming the door in the face of refugees would betray our deepest values. That’s not who we are.”

When Sony pulled The Interview from theaters in 2014, he warned, “We can’t start changing our patterns of behavior ... because there might be a terrorist attack." "That’s not who we are,” he said.

I could go on. Producer David Rutz created a video of the president saying it 46 times.

A speaker as thoughtful as President Obama would only use a phrase so often if it served some crucial purpose. But what?

Simply put, “that’s not who we are” performs a very difficult rhetorical maneuver: It’s a way to call a policy, idea, or person un-American without using that harsh term. It subtly conveys what would otherwise be an incendiary claim.

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The Left has been sensitive to being called “un-American” since at least the Red Scare of the 1950s. Liberals still consider the comeuppance Joseph McCarthy received from Joseph Welch during the Army-McCarthy Hearings of 1954 — “At long last, have you left no sense of decency?” — a Cold War highlight. The New York Times echoed it in a recent editorial: “What better time ... to show, at long last, that our nation has retained its sense of decency?”

This sensitivity assumed a slightly different form during the administration of George W. Bush. Then, Democrats responded to challenges of their patriotism with outrage. “The question of who is — or is not — a patriot all too often poisons our political debates,” declared presidential candidate Barack Obama in 2008. “I will never question the patriotism of others in this campaign. And I will not stand idly by when I hear others question mine.”

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Calling people un-American, or challenging their love for America, thus runs afoul of liberal lore and Obama’s own rhetorical code. So he reaches for a subtle phrase with less baggage.

“That’s not who we are” implicitly accuses political opponents of being apart from the American ideal, of being “other.” There’s no argument for why the targets are un-American, or what they are instead (Communist? Kenyan? Canadian?). It’s enough for those five syllables to challenge the American-ness of whatever idea or policy the president dislikes, and the informal language makes the act of exclusion hard to detect, a stealth test of national identity.

Obama is certainly justified in making claims based on specifically American values. But it is important to recognize that this is what he’s doing, because accusing others of being “un-American” diverges from his party’s history and his earlier rhetoric.

In their own minds, that’s not who they are.

Christopher J. Scalia works at a PR firm in Washington, DC.

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