Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. ?? Samuel Johnson (1775)

Many times in the past few weeks I have heard the stories of a POW?s heroic sacrifices. True as the stories may be, they seem dingy and tarnished in the glaring limelight. It?s the kind of thing that nearly all ?Greatest Generation? vets have always avoided. Few of them ever had the desire to ?wave the bloody shirt.? [An ancient political tactic best known to Americans in the post-Civil War period, a symbolic and often literal device by Republicans to suggest to the electorate that they were the good guys and the Democrats were the bad guys.]

While thinking about how this is playing out today, I came across the following argument by a Washington University historian:

One of the most peculiar and in some respects one of the most annoying aspects of great crises is the insistence by most of the adherents of irreconcilable opinions that they alone are the true patriots who have their country's welfare at heart. There is a cheap jingoism always waving the "bloody shirt " and shouting for war and armament without in the least comprehending what the demand involves. There is, if anything, a more dangerous enemy of calm and discreet action in the variety of jingo who has robbed the name of patriot of all its finer and loftier connotations. He spurns as an imputation upon the honor of his ancestors the questioning of his country's preparedness; he thrusts scornfully from him as unnecessary any impartial inquiry into its history to discover whether or not the facts correspond with his suppositions. His bluster masks a very real ignorance and an actual intellectual cowardice; for he is afraid his assumptions might not stand the test of examination and he fears to surrender them because he is not capable of imagining anything to substitute for them. Such "patriots" are not satisfied that our history should be glorious; they insist that it should be glorious according to certain preconceived notions about glory. The search for actual knowledge, the endeavor to reach a clear and wise decision after thoughtful consideration, should be recognized as the duty of patriotism, for by it alone can the true welfare of the country be advanced.

When we stand as a nation face to face with a crisis of undoubted gravity which may imperil in the near future the national safety and which certainly will leave deep traces upon the national structure, we have a right to ask ourselves in all seriousness and with all reverence what have been the props beneath our independence . . . We need to know and have a right to know how far our history is the work of military and naval prowess and how far our independence and our proud position in the family of nations are due to factors less evanescent and perishable than the genius of generals and the valor of armies. It may be vital for us to know the truth.

Roland G. Usher, Pan-Americanism (1915)


Truly, we deserve a president whose patriotism is revealed in thoughtfully considered, clear and wise decisions. Spare us the empty rhetoric of a super patriot.***


*** A Super Patriot hates liberals, intellectuals, moderates, pacifists, unions, minorities, teens, and people with foreign-sounding names. Now you know what a Super Patriot is. He?s someone who loves his country while hating 93 percent of the people who live in it.

Mad Magazine, quoted in Leonard Steinhorn, The Greater Generation: In Defense of the Baby Boom Legacy (2006)

When I was a kid, I remember hearing the mellifluous ?Wizard of Ooze,? Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen (R., IL), talking about Congressional spending. It seems relevant today so let me bring it into the 21st century by increasing the values by an order of magnitude: ?A trillion here, a trillion there, pretty soon you?re talking about real money!?

Tonight, Disney News (ABC) explained the financial crisis as one might expect?a soothing voiceover by the noted explainer of the complex, Robert Krulwich, and an animated cartoon of a $100 bill flying from person to person, making all our dreams come true. . . It reminded me of Joe Jackson?s lyrics about the Gipper*

The Pied Piper of the TV screen
Is gonna make it simple
And he's got it all mapped out
And illustrated with cartoons
Too hard for clever folks to understand
They're more used to words like:
Ideology . . .
They're not talkin' 'bout right and left
They're talkin' 'bout

Right and wrong - do you know the difference?


Well, do we?

Under the Bush administration the national debt has increased by $4,169,300,804,666 from $5,727,776,738,304 to $9,897,077,542,970, a 73% increase. With 304 million Americans, that?s $32,468 per person!

So, the bailout: What?s another trillion among friends? We are all friends, right?


* Note for those under thirty?you might not know that the Gipper was Ronald Reagan, a B-list actor and, as president of the Screen Actors Guild, a cooperative HUAC** witness. As a gubernatorial candidate, his proposed solution for campus unrest was ?Let?s have the bloodbath now and get it over with.? Governor Reagan (R., CA) went on to become the object of age-related jokes on NBC's Saturday Night Live. The last laugh was on us all?in 1981 Reagan became the 40th President of the United States.

** House Un-American Activities Committee. Patriotic commie hunters. Comparable to the patriotic witch hunters of 1692 Salem (see Arthur Miller, The Crucible). Their inquisition inspired the Blacklist?hardly different than the Soviet process of turning opponents into nonpersons. Another of histoy's many ironies.

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us?that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion?that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain?that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom?and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address (1863)

A full century later, as a boy of nine, I remember the black & white TV images of Dr. King's March on Washington. A few months later, the same TV set, this magic window to other realities, served up the murder of a murderer and a president's funeral.

Five years later, April 4. Free at last. TV (now Brought To You In Living Color!) served up cities in flames. Burn, baby, burn.

Everywhere but Indianapolis, where RFK pleaded for peace and reconciliation.

I wasn't quite fourteen, but I knew that Bobby was right: we needed peace and reconciliation--here, in Vietnam, around the world.

June 5. "Now it's on to Chicago. . ." That sick terror grows in the pit of my stomach, blood hammers in my ears. I'm shaking. Dear God, not again! Tears. Now, too. Four decades fall away: anamnesis. More blood shed for me, for us all.

In spite of everything that has happened to our beloved country since then, especially since 2001, "I still believe in a place called Hope."

YES WE CAN!