This kind of thing seems to happen a lot these days and it drives me crazy: A fanatical member of some religion or other does something horrible: blows up a bus, bombs an abortion clinic, whatever. Then a more moderate adherent of that same religion gets interviewed by cable news. Their response to the horrible act? “It was completely un-Christian [or un-Islamic, or whatever]. Christianity is a religion of peace. It does not teach or condone such act. Therefore, that act had nothing to do with Christianity. We who are peaceful are the true Christians.”

Well of course this is bullshit. It’s true that most strains within the overall religious tradition known as Christianity don’t condone bombing abortion clinics. But some strains do. And large chunks of non-clinic-bombing Christianity are stridently opposed to abortion and approve of pretty intense non-violent action against clinics and doctors, providing fertile ground for nut-job violent extremists. Rather than being un-Christian, bombing abortion clinics turns out to be quite Christian, an analyzing it in its Christian context can be quite fruitful. Likewise with violent Islamic extremism, etc.

Still, you see why religious moderates pull this particular rhetorical trick: It helps them defend their brand of their particular religion by defining the extremists out rather than in. Those who make this move are using “Christianity” as a normative rather than a descriptive term, claiming the right to define Christianity for themselves and denying it to the extremists. (The extremists, of course, pull the same move in reverse: This of how often you hear Islamic fundamentalists say that moderate Muslims are not “true Muslims.”) And it’s tempting, almost compelling, for us on the left in America to do something similar:

I don’t need to list here all the awful things our country has done, especially lately. Foremost in my mind these days is of course the nasty, futile war of aggression we’re fighting in Iraq. And maybe the most disturbing aspect of our post-9/11 nation is the apparently widespread use of torture by Americans, both in Iraq and elsewhere. This morning’s Wasington Post has a fresh article claiming that torture is continuing at U.S.-run prisons in Iraq long after Abu Ghraib came to light and months after Rumsfeld said, “It is absolutely the responsibility of every U.S. service member, if they see inhumane treatment being conducted, to intervene to stop it.”

Our armed forces and our intelligence services are known to torture prisoners. This torture appears to be a persistent characteristic of our dealings with Muslim prisoners overseas. Our national leaders resist or ignore efforts to limit their authority to order such torture. And although there is some public and political opposition, the people responsible for what are by any reasonable definition crimes of war remain in power.

Somerset Maugham called patriotism “in peace-time an attitude best left to politicians, publicists, and fools, but in the dark days of war an emotion that can wring the heart-strings.” But looking at this war — the fact that we are fighting it, and how we are fighting it — my heartstrings are not wrung with any sort of love of country. To the contrary, I feel disgust and shame.

It is here that many people say, “What you are disgusted by is indeed horrible. But it is not American. The administration has betrayed American values. We who oppose these actions are the true Americans.”

That’s arguably somewhat true, I suppose. Certainly our national traditions contain noble values, the recognition of universal and inalienable rights and the rule of law that are not compatible with what is currently happening in the name of We the People.

But how honest is it, really, to insist that this war, this torture, and and all the other abuses of the last six years are un-American? At what point do you give up and admit that when we as a nation look in the mirror, something hideous is staring back at us?

At the same, though, we have to insist that Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and Gonzalez don’t have the right to define “America,” to make it synonymous with aggression and torture. While avoiding illusions about our present national shame, we can insist that America can and should stand for something better.