Not in a categorical sense -- you are absolutely right. But I do believe that citizenship and loyalties are closely linked. There is a question of community, ZC: to which community do you or I or others belong? Once we have decided, integrity requires us to live out that reality in concrete ways. General Lee for example, having decided that he was primarily a Virginian, joined himself to a cause he considered hopeless -- out of integrity with his self-understanding.
Why should they stand with a country founded by heretical puritanical freemasons?
It's an excellent question. Here's another: why should they stand with a country founded by ethnic-cleansing terrorists (oh, wait -- that includes America too)?
I am not trying to bait you, ZC; indeed, even though we frequently disagree, I have a lot of respect for you. It's because of this respect that I toss out serious, principled questions:
1. Does USA=Obama, as the thread title all but insists? Are we conceding the notion that the American polity is now personal, invested in the Leader, whoever he may be? Are we now officially a country of men and not of laws?
2. Should ethnicity trump other aspects of community? If we're to say yes, can non-Jewish Americans regard their Jewish neighbors as equally committed to the communities of which they're nominally citizens? Is this good for the community at large? Is this good for Jews? What does citizenship mean to Jews?
The ugly subtext to the title of this thread is that Jews belong no place but their own country and elsewhere are not to be viewed as loyal. Do we really want to go there?
Ethnic cleansing terrorists? Sounds like Joshua at Jericho!
I am not Jewish. But I believe there is One loyalty for every being in existence, and that is to the True G-d. This trumps community, country, family, ethnicity--everything. This is one reason I get so flustered when people argue for chr*stianity based on American history rather than the actual claims of chr*stianity itself (as I said, it's just another way of sayng "deze are de wayz of our pipplez"). When searching for the Universal Truth, the religious opinions of the founders of the United States of America are a very minor bit of evidence.
The thing is that (again, from my own perspective) G-d has chosen to communicate with and teach the world not via an abstract religious philosophy or a universal organization but via an ethnic group--so much so that membership in this ethnic group (as laid out in Divine Law) is not based on beliefs but on who one's mother was, so that if one was born to a Jewish mother, one is Jewish and bound by all the Halakhah of the Torah, whether one realizes it or not. So far as I know, a Jewish communist/fascist/moslem/chr*stian/secular humanist is still Jewish according to Halakhah with all that that implies. Everyone else is born a Noachide and bound by the Noachide law with all that that implies.
Of course, non-Jews may convert Halakhically to Judaism in which case they're full Jews whose mother and father are Sarah and Abraham.
If on the unlikely chance you are one of those handful of Catholics who accept that Genesis 1-11 is actual history rather than didactic mythology, I'd be happy to have you on my side in some of the battles on that topic.