“Patriotism
means to stand by the country. It does NOT mean to stand by the President or
any other public official save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands
by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves
the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by
inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country.”
— Theodore Roosevelt, 26th President of the United
States
I am a patriot. I’m 52 years old and live in a quiet, comfortable neighborhood
in the north suburbs of Chicago. I’m a
self-employed writer and graphic artist, and have the time and the freedom to
read a lot (and ignore the pabulum that is being fed to us on the nightly
‘news’) and pay attention to what is really going on in the world and in this
country. I’m reasonably intelligent, and enough of an independent thinker to
question authority. And I’m afraid. Very afraid.
But I’m not afraid of the terrorists. I’m frightened by what is happening to
the country I love. This Republican administration has hijacked my country by
exploiting fear. They are trampling on the constitution in the name of fear. We
are no safer now than we were before 9/11. Osama is still on the loose. Our
ports and chemical plants and nuclear facilities are not being protected. The
federal response to hurricane Katrina is naked proof that this administration
is inept, at best, at protecting its citizens.
I cherish the rights and freedoms America represents:
the right to free speech, freedom of religious beliefs, freedom of the press,
freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, the right to a speedy and public
trial, and protection from cruel and unusual punishment. I see those rights and
freedoms being eroded every day, again in the name of fear.
I believe in social justice. Tax breaks for the rich are not ‘trickling down’
or ‘lifting all boats.’ They are just making the uber-rich ever more wealthy
while gutting the social safety net, allowing our national infrastructure to
crumble and making the ‘American Dream’ ever less accessible to the majority of
Americans.
I don’t believe that the cancerous corruption now being exposed in Washington is just
‘business as usual.’ I do believe that the power grab being executed by this
administration is unprecedented. Unitary Executive my ass.
This is the first time in over 30 years–since
I marched in demonstrations against the Vietnam War during college–that I have been moved to go out into the
street and protest. I find that I can no longer sit quietly on the
sidelines and watch while my country slouches toward fascism, corporatism and
religious fanaticism.
I watched and listened and wept this past summer as Cindy Sheehan boldly stood
up to question for what ‘noble cause’ her son had died in Iraq. It took a lot
of self-examination to understand why it moved me to tears (beyond the empathy
I felt for her), and I finally understood that I wept first out of a sense of
helplessness, and then born of the realization that I should be doing something myself. And not just because I have two
draft-age sons.
So I’ve realized that I must participate
and add my voice to the growing chorus of dissent. Because if I don’t do it
now, I may no longer have the freedom to do it in the future. And that’s why
I’m getting on the bus.
Like many of us, I am incredulous on a daily basis to wake up and find that the
current administration remains comfortably entrenched despite daily, horrifying
revelations of their abuses of power and trust. I am choosing to speak out, not
just by calling my elected representatives and expressing my concerns, but by
taking it to the streets. I know there are millions upon millions of my fellow
citizens who share my concerns, and I hope that more and more will join in
protest as they realize they are, in fact, in the majority. Let us not rest
comfortably in the false belief, as ordinary German citizens did while Hitler
rose to power, that ‘it can’t happen here’–it’s happening now, and only we, the
people, can stop it.
One final thought . . .
We’ve already seen this:
I hope we never have to see something like this:
