How many times have you questioned a US policy and had a Republican accuse you of anti-Americanism? If you are like me, it is far too many times to count. Such criticism stems from the sad truth that the accusers have absolutely no idea what patriotism is. According to Henry David Thoreau, the truest patriots are those who serve the state with their conscience. That means demanding that our nation actually practice the ideals we claim to hold and opposing it when it fails to do so. Opposed to this we have Republican pseudo-patriotism, the “my country right or wrong” crowd. The true patriots are the people who love these United States enough to demand our best, not the people who wrap themselves in the flag and settle for tyranny, or attempt to impose tyranny as Republican leaders do.
Samuel Johnson famously wrote in 1775 that “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” In The Devil’s Dictionary, Ambrose Bierce made the appropriate correction: “With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first.”
To be fair, Bierce had a 135-year advantage over Johnson. He could look back at the history of a particular brand of patriotism—the American kind—which, like everything else American, our modern flag-wavers will explain to us benighted folks, is exceptional, unlike European patriotism, which to them is a lesser and ignoble kind.
This they claim as if, besides giving us impressive and justifiably revered notions of liberty and justice, our Founders and their successors did not expand the nation from sea to shining sea (and beyond) with a century of mass murder and grand larceny against indigenous peoples, a ginned-up war to grab more than half of Mexico, another to snag Puerto Rico and the Philippines, and a few lesser skirmishes by which places such as Maui became territory where the Stars and Stripes now flies.
The pretend patriots are mortal enemies of us citizens who deeply love our country, but recognize that, historically and now, it is a composite of the good, the bad, and the ugly. We who refuse to reiterate the latest version of my-country-right-or-wrong should be cast out. They deplore us who acknowledge with condemnation that a jingoistic, exclusionary, authoritarian patriotism was in large part what helped make the United States “great” in the worst sense of the word. We who object to the idolatrous intermingling of militaristic nationalism with patriotism might as well be terrorists in their view.
In the words of George Washington, those who practice the “impostures of pretend patriotism” try at every opportunity to stifle dissent and fill the silence with propaganda… [emphasis added]
Inserted from <Daily Kos>
Note the graphic above. It does not represent patriotism. It represents the emergence fascism, the bane of true patriots everywhere.
22 Responses to “Republican Pseudo-Patriotism”
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Seems to me no one knows the definitions of nationalism and patriotism and their differences anymore.
That’s what I’m trying to change. 🙂
This is the most important news of the day!! Nay of the past 45 years – we’re stepping farther away from true patriotism every year – it is pathetic!
Thanks Tom – Hope I can help to pass this along!
YVW, Lee. Please do.
By their definition, “my country right or wrong”, the pseudo-patriots are null and void. I heard them preach this mantra all through the “W” years, but now that we have a “new man” in charge, I’d like to know where all that “patriotism” (heh heh) has gone! 😈
It’s sitting in Michele Bachmann’s back pocket waiting for an investigation on who’s an American and who’s not; by her definition, of course.
Amen again!
Amen
What seems to be happening is the logical expansion of “America ; Love it or leave it” ; way of thinking ; Waving a flag does not make one a Patriot “The true patriots are the people who love these United States enough to demand our best, not the people who wrap themselves in the flag and settle for tyranny, or attempt to impose tyranny as Republican leaders do.”(from this article)
There you go quoting me again. Hat size increasing!
From an article in the “New York Times” over 65 years ago by Henry A. Wallace, FDR’s vice-president:
http://newdeal.feri.org/wallace/haw23.htm
That is correct! (about American fascists) Thank you!
Amen!
Excellent article. Thanks Nameless.
He said it 65 years ago. Some think that the Repugnants of today have changed for the worse. In truth, they haven’t learned a thing in 65 years.
Well said.
That picture is so unpatriotic that it is actually worse than just Fascism. That’s Fascism combined with Theocracy. 😥
“When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.”
-Sinclair Lewis
Today we see and hear the pseudo-patriots as they wave the flag with one hand and hold a gun in the other. It’s either believe as I do, do as I say or else, while they violate everything that forms the basis of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. And, among them are those pseudo-Christians that proceed to violate in nearly every way the teachings of Christ. What hypocracy. It defines them.
You could be quoting me on this. I have said the same so many times that I hear my own echo.
these bastards been selling out our country to corporations like KOCH BRO’S and even other countries to line their own pocket while emptying the people pockets
Welcome Tanya. 🙂
Exactly right.