A dinner-table conversation on political liberalism seems to have caught the imagination of neophyte activists in Pakistan and trickled its way from drawing rooms to blogs to mainstream papers now. Most read as journeys of political self-discovery rather than intellectual offerings. The ‘analysis’ by these newly-conscientised, English speaking, elite patriots relies on a revisionism of anti-imperial heroism, in the context of the ‘war on terror’. In their criticism of a new nemesis called ‘The Liberals’, these new patriots recast themselves as the radical and authentic alternatives to the fake, traditional or Other Liberals, who are overtly critical of Islamic militancy and, therefore, necessarily pro-imperialist.