So after someone on this list made a rather snide and shallow swipe at my patriotism it got me to thinking. What is a patriot? Is it someone who waves the flag in others faces? Is it someone who believes in jeebus? Is it someone pays their taxes? Perhaps its someone who serves in the military. What makes a patriot?
To me a patriot is someone who lives by pretty straight forward values. Someone that neither lies cheats nor steals. A person who thinks and then translates those thoughts into actions. A patriot makes the effort to leave this world a better place than they found it, and does so by the manner in which he lives. Furthermore a patriot is someone who speaks out when he or she sees something that they disagree with. Its getting harder and harder to be a patriot. Especially when your govt on top of all the lies cheating and stealing flat out steals 300 dollars per person for every man woman and child to bail out a risk taking private enterprise on wall street. This on top of the wars we fight and the taxes we cut is just an unbearable act and under no justification is it patriotic.
Nothing proves that the current coterie of our leadership is anything but patriotic more than the bold faced illegal theft of 30 billion dollars in publicly backed money given to JP Morgan Chase to buy out Bear Stearns. The quickest way to destroy a nation is to debase its currency. As Henry Rollins said, “all it takes is for one person to stand up and say, fuck this!”
