With it the combination of it being the 15th anniversary of 9/11 and an election year, it really gets me thinking about how some people view how you should be patriotic.
I love our country, but I acknowledge our bloody history, the damage we have done and still how far we need to go. To me, being a true patriot is wanting our country to make amends for our past, build on our future and really put the true meaning of “with liberty and justice for all” to work. Because honestly, we do not have equal liberty or justice in this country.
Our country is built on classism and white supremacy. Police forces were not started to help the every day people, they were developed to protect the rich. It shows in the laws and courts.
Freedom has to mean more than words, it has to mean that even if you do not agree with someone’s actions you defend their right to do it….ie, burning a flag, protesting…..that is their right. You cannot give lip service to our freedoms and then get upset when someone exercises their constitutional right. Then you truly do not believe in the freedoms that you speak about and are a hypocrite and only want what you believe in expressed.
I may detest the KKK and neo-nazis but I’ll defend their right for rallies and protest.
I do not get blind “patriotism”. That has got be most potentially dangerous form of the patriotism there is.
That is what gave us Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini….strong men….fascist and communist….murders. They were able to use blind patriotism to get to power. Feed their people the lines that they wanted to hear and then murder those who disagreed….Putin does that now. And Trump thinks that is how it should be done with as much as he praises me. I am NO fan of Reagan but he would be rolling in his grave over that.
Blind patriotism is un-American. It closes you off to what needs to be addressed, it closes you off from what fellow Americans are going through. Just because you haven’t seen or lived it, does not mean it does not happen and it is not true.
It is our duty as Americans to question the status quo for how the rich keep getting richer and the poor gets poorer, how they are destroying the middle class. How our “representatives” are in the pockets of big business and are millionaires, how they still get paid when they are not doing their job, while we would have been fired.
It is our duty hold our elected officials accountable and call them to the carpet. A prime example on 9/11 is how they all give lip service to “never forget” but do NOTHING to help the first responders that are still suffering. It is twisted that they have to be shamed and even that does not always work. They want to use the legislation to help the 9/11 first responders for their own gain with riders. That is not patriotic, that is disgusting.
It is our duty as Americans to fight for justice and social equality. It is our duty to speak up and not be lead like sheep. It is our duty to practice what we preach on the freedoms of this country.
Patriotism is loving your country, while acknowledging it’s faults while you try and make it better for the next generation.
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