Independence Day

Gouverneur MorrisAmerican statesman, Pennsylvania delegate to the Constitutional Conevention, drafter of the United States Constitution.

"The Rich will strive to establish their dominion & enslave the rest. They always did. They always will. The proper security agst them is to form them into a separate interest. The two forces will then controul each other. Let the rich mix with the poor and in a Commercial Country, they will establish an oligarchy. Take away commerce, and the democracy will triumph. Thus it has been all the world over. So it will be among us. Reason tells us we are but men: and we are not to expect any particular interference of Heaven in our favor. By thus combining & setting apart, the aristocratic interest, the popular interest will be combined agst. it. There will be a mutual check and mutual security..."

True Patriots Act

You shouldn't have to surrender your liberties to prove you love the red, white and blue

By Richard A. Kaye

July 3, 2005

Given today's war-on-terrorism rhetoric, it's no surprise that patriotism dominates U.S. political discussions. Some of the more controversial parts of the Patriot Act are up for renewal, and the House of Representatives, after questioning a handful of its provisions, has approved the document. The debate on the merits of the act invariably has focused on the keen divide between the value of civil liberties and the imperatives of national security. Liberals worry about the Orwellian nature of the Patriot Act, while conservatives stress the necessary sacrifices in personal freedom required in the age of terrorism.

But something vital has been lost in this debate — namely, the disturbingly limited way in which many public officials define patriotism. Exactly when and how did patriotic feeling get defined in such reactive, negative terms? Since when does being patriotic require not so much a commitment to positive ideals and actions but, rather, to gestures that encourage an atmosphere of fearful watchfulness, xenophobia and the surrender of our freedoms?

Defenders of the Patriot Act insist that patriotism entails giving up some individual privacy to guard against the possibility of a terrorist attack from within or without. But patriotism also concerns a love of privacy and free speech and, not least important, a spirited willingness to defend those ideals.

Patriotism consists of multiple, positive actions on behalf of the United States — registering voters, working in an AIDS hospice, volunteering at a disadvantaged school or raising questions about the Bush administration's full-throttle militarism. Almost no one today discusses the idea of national service that would require young people of different ethnicities and economic backgrounds to come together for community projects, not military ones. The most disturbing aspect of the New Patriotism is its suggestion that dissent about the war in Iraq — or even a simple questioning of progress there — is unpatriotic.

Patriotism was not always so jingoistically defined. As the Princeton political scientist Maurizio Viroli argues in "For Love of Country," it was once a positive public virtue. According to the civic republican tradition (a tradition that includes thinkers as diverse as Machiavelli and Rousseau), patriotism was love not so much of country but of its republican forms and their traditions.

In Viroli's account, the good patriot makes sacrifices, works hard to preserve republican values and participates in civic life. This version of patriotism emphasizes positive freedom — our ability to act on our own behalf for the sake of the freedom of the republic — as opposed to negative liberty — passively allowing the state to protect us and in the process rob us of our liberties. The patriot works aggressively to defend the freedoms that make a people a republic.

The specter of a passive citizenry surrendering its rights is sadly pertinent — as is the danger of not distinguishing between patriotism and nationalism. Patriotism, in the tradition outlined by Viroli, is an activist, participatory ideal. By contrast, nationalism is largely symbolic, and at its worst mere spectacle. (Witness the attempt by Congress to draft a constitutional amendment criminalizing flag burning.)

American historians remind us of those more enlightened moments in our history when patriotic feeling entailed a range of populist causes. Gordon S. Wood and Bernard Bailyn have separately documented the ways in which the Founding Fathers drew on classical republican ideals as they forged the ideology of a new nation.

Michael Kazin distinguished between patriotic sentiment and nationalistic passion. In "The Populist Persuasion," he wrote, "[In the] late 1930s, under the aegis of the New Deal, institutional patriotism was flourishing: the opening of the Jefferson Memorial and the National Archives (displaying immaculately preserved copies of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence) and WPA's sponsorship of historic guides and murals all connoted a sunny view of the American prospect."

We should reflect on these earlier traditions in American history. Although appeals to patriotism are almost always used for repressive purposes, a patriotic position should not be simply grounded in a citizen's reflexive acceptance of fear and surveillance. It is also an active involvement in civic life.

There is always a negative side to patriotism in wartime. But in the climate created by the various "wars" in which the United States is involved today, there is no positive side — no higher task or mission is offered to people for which they can make real sacrifices. Other than spy on our neighbors and wrap oneself in the flag, our government asks little from its citizenry (it even is letting its citizens pay less in taxes and declines to establish a military draft).

Generating a culture of nervous suspicion, the Patriot Act outlandishly distorts an American tradition of patriotic thinking and action.

Washington's Do-Nothing Patriots

They save the flag; everything else is on a back burner.

Margaret Carlson

June 30, 2005

It will soon be the Fourth of July again. Do you know where your flag is?

Why there it is, inside the Capitol, being waved around by members delighted to solve a problem that doesn't exist while ignoring ones that do. Last week, your House of Representatives voted, 286 to 130, to amend the Constitution to save the flag from being burned. The measure now goes to the Senate.

You say you weren't worried about flag-burning? That's why the folks in Congress make the big bucks and you don't.

Since 1989, when the Supreme Court ruled that the 1st Amendment protected desecrating the flag, Congress has been grandstanding about it with little danger of actually desecrating the Constitution with a frivolous amendment. It gives Republicans something other than the morning-after pill, gay marriage and lesbian puppets on public TV to rail against.

If lawmakers wanted to do something really patriotic this Fourth, they might do their jobs. How about asking hard questions about the war, and beefing up the armor on those Humvees that keep getting blown apart? If Old Glory is so important, why have so few House members traveled to Dover to see it serving the high purpose of draping the coffins of the more than 1,700 soldiers who died for it?

They sure won't run into the ever-optimistic president there. His response to the fresh wave of carnage in Iraq was to take to the airwaves Tuesday night in a PR effort designed, White House senior advisor Dan Bartlett said, to "educate the American people" about "our strategy for victory." How about educating the president?

The soldiers at Ft. Bragg know better. They know Americans were not greeted as liberators in Iraq, and the rosy, unfounded assumptions that they would be created the catastrophe now killing their buddies.

The insurgency, not in its last throes, may well kill and maim thousands more soldiers as well as countless kids being recruited with everything but keys to a Lexus convertible.

If Bush had given that same myopic speech before Congress, there would have been at least 10 standing ovations, led by armchair patriots waving the flag. At Ft. Bragg on Tuesday, there was no applause until a presidential advance man conspicuously started clapping.

Congress is proof of Samuel Johnson's adage that patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels. Look at one of the flag amendment's loudest and proudest cosponsors, Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham.

The Republican congressman from San Diego is under FBI scrutiny for a questionable real estate deal with a defense contractor, in which he made $700,000. "Ask the men and women who stood on top of the [World] Trade Center," Cunningham said. "Ask them and they will tell you: Pass this amendment."

Then there's Rep. Donald Sherwood (R-Pa.), who also wrapped himself in the Old Glory amendment. This is the Sherwood of the "Sherwood denies choking woman" headline in the April 30 Wilkes-Barre Times Leader. The married, 64-year-old lawmaker told the paper he was just giving an "acquaintance" (a former Hill intern) a "back rub" in his Washington apartment when suddenly she ran into the bathroom and called the police. The 29-year-old "acquaintance" proceeded to file a $5.5-million lawsuit against the congressman, alleging they had a five-year affair punctuated by bouts of physical abuse.

Sherwood has apologized to his family and constituents for causing "pain and embarrassment" but denied the assault allegations. Republicans who thought a president having sex with an intern was an impeachable offense have rallied round.

Every member who's expended an ounce of energy on this amendment should be ashamed. If they don't have guts on Iraq, how about restoring the House Ethics Committee, which should call before it every member lobbyist Jack Abramoff ever put up in a four-star hotel?

How about balancing the budget, or reforming healthcare so patients could have a real doctor in attendance rather than Bill "Video Doc" Frist making diagnoses from the Senate floor?

Even former Speaker Newt Gingrich is alarmed by how careless Republicans have been with their power. "When you are in the minority, you need to fight," he warned this week. "When you are in the governing majority, you need to produce." This from a man who in his day threw more cocktails than Molotov.

This Fourth of July, the flag will be flying over my parents' house in Pennsylvania. The country will be celebrating. But the sight of Congress doing its job would elicit more astonished oohs and aahs than any fireworks.

Lies, all lies. The liberal media will never learn that honest Americans love our country and support our presidents. And anyone who doesn't love this country can just get lost.

Sincerely, Benedict Arnold

Sunshine patriots