The brownshirts are in high spirits. They’re goose stepping higher and whistling Dixie louder as they make their way to the Tea Bagger National Convention next month in Nashville. Dick Armey and Fox News are giddy, and Cigna, Blue Cross and United HealthCare execs are huffin’ Cuban cigars in the boardrooms. They all have reason for jubilation.
Recent events have proved what they all hoped was true. When shored up with sufficient quantities of money and media even the most crude, crass and mean spirited agendas can be made to appeal to a large segment of voters. Shoving, shouting, tricking the simple minded and reducing the level of discourse to its lowest common denominator can fill both pro wrestling arenas and polling stations with giant crowds of people. Largely, the same people.
The Tea Party movement, a creation of money and media determined to divorce human decency and reason from politics, has tasted what it interprets as first blood in the election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts. Brown’s election is seen by teabaggers as the first fruit of their efforts back in the spring and summer to popularize the politics of “me, me, me, me and mine.” They are right.
Thinking about the phenomenon of the Tea Party movement has led us to thinking about that movement’s remarkable success in the torture and dismemberment of some very basic concepts and terms. Words like “patriot.”
Tea Party Patriots they call themselves while bearing a standard that is plainly unpatriotic. The patriots of the Tea Party are like slug nickels. They are fake. They are counterfeit.
The American Heritage Dictionary defines a “patriot” as “one who loves, supports, and defends one’s country.” Tea Party people fail on all three counts.
So, what is a patriot? How can we know one if we see one? It isn’t too difficult to distinguish the genuine from the counterfeit. We just need an example, a standard by which to compare the real with the fraudulent. Using the American Heritage definition as a guide, compiling a checklist of patriotic traits shouldn’t be hard at all.
First, real patriots want America to succeed. They want our economy to thrive, our foreign policy objectives to be achieved and for the many programs and initiatives we collectively undertake to be successful. Success is not possible, they know, if our leaders fail. Therefore, real patriots lend their unfailing support, prayers and words of encouragement to their elected leaders, their President and those charged with overseeing the business of our nation.
A real patriot may be highly partisan, and may contend in the public forum in favor of this policy or that. But, when the time for debate has passed and the will of the nation has been expressed, the patriot respects the decisions of his countrymen. He does not hope for their failure, and he does not work to frustrate their efforts to attend to the nation’s business.
Real patriots love America, ever mindful that America does not exist apart from her people—people of all races, religions, ethnic backgrounds, sexual orientations and schools of thought. People of many talents, and people with frailties and flaws. Patriots want everyone to succeed, to prosper and to partake in their fair measure of happiness, security and well being. They want no one excluded. No one left out.
Patriots want none to suffer for lack of food, shelter or medical care. They want none to be persecuted, ostracized or shunned, They want none abandoned to struggle with life’s challenges alone. Patriots care, and they prove their caring through lives of service to their fellow men and women.
Patriots view neither life nor citizenship as a competition, but rather perceive them as opportunities for cooperation. Patriots do not seek advantage or undue personal gain, but strive to bring all together in concerted effort for the good of all.
The true patriot is willing to sacrifice for his country. Whether the need is in military service or civil defense efforts when the nation is under attack, volunteer civil service in time of crisis and in response to great need, the contribution of additional taxes or charitable giving beyond that which is convenient or comfortable, the patriot stands ever ready to offer up that which, within the context of his circumstances, he has for the good of the country.
Patriots want no voice silenced. Freedom of speech and expression are the jewels of American freedoms and the coveted source of the American patriot’s liberty.
Our constitutional guarantee of freedom of religion, the patriot knows, rests upon our respect for one another. Where the Christian respects the Muslim, the Jew respects the Hindu, and each is committed to the liberty of all others, there is spread the root from which religious freedom grows. The true patriot not only defends the freedom of all to believe and worship according to their conscience, but ever facilitates the exercise thereof.
Patriots show hospitality and compassion to our nation’s guests and to those who seek refuge within our borders. Patriots are proud of America’s tradition of hospitality and welcome and delight in extending the best of both to the strangers among us.
To the patriot there are no “deserving poor.” All Americans in need are deserving of the patriot’s resources and energies. Patriots love their country. Patriots love the American people.
Patriots do not seek to profit from the misfortunes of others. Patriots neither practice nor condone predatory lending, foreclosure market profiteering nor other schemes which financially oppress the American people. Patriots do not prey upon Americans.
True patriotism, like all self-sacrificing service, is a wonderful thing. Fake patriotism is hateful in no less measure. As the Tea Party people parade across our television sets we are reminded of the sentiment of Albert Einstein.
“Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism — how passionately I hate them.”
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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
At first I thought that all the tea bag people were just stupid and dupes of people like Dick Armey. I have changed my mind about that after realizing that a number of people I work with and know socially are tea partiers. These people aren’t stupid, they’re just greedy and obsessed with their money. It doesn’t matter whether they have a little money or a lot of money, they want to be sure that nobody else gets any of it.
Had you seen this? Very enlightening…
http://superkev.net/2010/01/12/on-the-backs-of-tennessees-middle-class-or-the-story-behind-tea-party-nations-dishonest-beginnings/
Scott… I hadn’t seen it. Thanks for the link.