A few came back critical, if not resentful, of America, influenced, for the most part, by the universities they studied in, like Harvard and Berkley. One or two were resentful, having read books written by American authors.

But all this talk about America is mostly about the US, the White House, the Pentagon, the Department of Defense, the CIA, and "General Motors." It isn’t about America as a nation or Americans as a people. Hollywood and TV networks also have their critics and haters. You can easily find many Americans, particularly in the so-called Eastern Liberal Establishment ("the nattering nabobs of negativity," as the unlamented Spiro Agnew called them), who think, feel, and express themselves in the same way.

In America at the turn of the century, you had Mark Twain writing and speaking against the imperial "vision" of McKinley. Elihu Root defended in the US Congress a people who produced Jose Rizal and stressed that the Filipinos needed no civilizing, unlike the "Indios" who needed Christianizing by Spain.

The irony is that Filipinos found themselves divided between pro-Americans and anti-Americans because of their political leaders. This had an element of truth during the fight for independence between Nacionalistas and Federalistas. But it didn’t take long before those who advocated "dominion status" became a laughing stock. However, a statehood movement counted millions of members.

Post-war politics was between nationalists and anti-nationalists. Nationalists were labeled "pinkos," but it’s arguable that this was also the consequence of contests for political power. Five communists were refused the congressional seats they won in fair elections. Did the US have a hand in this? But later on, a US mission which advocated land reform in the Macmillan-Rivera Report was denounced by congressmen as "communistic."

Living long enough, one realizes that anti-Americanism and pro-Americanism in this country were largely slogans used by politicians to win and keep power.

There is no "nationalism" in the corridors of power, only "me-ism."