Patriotism

Our next president, and hopefully my new boss, just talked about it so now I'm going to real quickly. First I'll go off subject and say that I'm in talks with the Obama campaign and if that happens I might be really really busy until November. Now back to patriotism, also known as the last refuge of scoundrels. In order to define patriotism I personally believe its important to think about who the patriots were, before they won the Superbowl. Admittedly the ones we think of first Washington, Jefferson, Adams and the rest of the posse were upper class, but like always they were held up by a mass of average people who were willing to die so their children could be free from tyranny. So at least my vision of a patriot, a true patriot is any person who will fight, by any means necessary to protect the ideals of this country. We could then get into what those ideals are, but again my view at least is that those ideals were laid out quite eloquently in the nations first document, which due to a coincidence was signed on Independence Day. They were then refined a bit into the constitution. Those ideals are what defines America, not out borders but our dreams. This is why when taking office the president does not swear to protect the citizens but to protect the constitution. But a patriot has an even greater creed yet, he or she does not simply defend the constitution but must ensure that our ideals are defended for even our constitution is not immune from bad ideals from time to time, like prohibition. This is why the patriot must defend against all enemies foreign or domestic, the original patriots knew that freedom cannot survive if power is allowed to be too tightly concentrated. That is why we have an elected government and not a King, although it is interesting to note that originally only the house was directly elected by the people. Now senators are too, the president is still not elected by the people and I'm convinced thats a bad thing, until I talk to voters who help to structure national policy with their vote and know nothing about either candidate. Scary. Anyway the job of the patriot is critical and I think this entire nation has been so busy waving flags and supporting the troops to notice that there's hardly a true patriot left among us. How many of us have truly challenged the attacks on the constitution by this administration? Who has laid it all on the line to say that the patriot act is illegal? Or the many other illegal acts. Oh sure we march in protests after getting permission from the police, despite the fact that we already have the right by the constitution while the police do NOT have the right to stop a peaceful public gathering. We also write or call our senators, we harass our mayors and our representatives but then we go back to our jobs, our cars and live our lives we may grumble a bit but we've all gone soft. If there were a true patriot alive today they would probably be rotting away in jail right now, maybe they are. I do not mean to challenge what we call the patriotism of any one, I want to challenge what we call patriotism, and I want to challenge us all to live up to that most honorable duty.

Or we could just say that patriotism is defined by lapel pins.