Loving My Country, Fearing Patriotism

Los Angeles Times ^ | 09/22/2001 | C. CUSHING-MURRAY

[Pokey78]

As I taught 11th-grade English last week, one star-spangled student asked me why I was not wearing the colors of our flag. Despite the emotionally charged state of our nation and with due caution toward trying not to impose my beliefs, I gave the only answer I could: I fear patriotism.

I suppose this is un-American, but it's not that I don't love my country. It's that the way we practice patriotism is, for lack of better words, unpatriotic.

Click here for the entire column.

[Illbay]

You cannot truly love your country and not be a patriot. You cannot fail to be a patriot, and then honestly claim to love your country.

[vmatt]

The displaying of colors alone a patriot does not make.

[austinite]

Thanks, I needed that like I need to have someone piss on my cornflakes this AM. Obviously, this person is a looser. But if you think that was bad, visit any college campus. My son is not going to college. He doesn't need that.

[Dudoight]

First, sir/madam, you must look up the definition of the word patriotism. That these terrorists were patriotic to their 'people' is a bastardization of the meaning of the word. Second, you need to look up the definition of the word terrorism. Then, you need to look up the legal definition of the word war. If My lai, Nagasaki, Hiroshima and Dresden can be construed as terrorism, we need consider how poorly we prepare our 'English' teachers, when they begin to write their own dictionaries to fit their personal agendas. I can see from whence today's students arrive at their universities full of mental mush.

[Cleburne]

La,la,la, peace not war, just give peace a chance,blah, blah.

I wonder if these folks got a chance to travel to some country under Communism, or a region torn by Muslim extremist blowing each other up and killing women and children, if they could see what happens when a sheepherder in Afghanistan steps on a Soviet landmine because the Taliban ruled it illegal for aid workers to teach him how to avoid them, see the piles of bones of people slaughtered by the millions by Communists in Southeast Asia, heck, smell the stench of dead bodies underneath and around the piles of rubble in New York. I wonder if they'ld still be singing.

Peace can often only come at the point of the gun. And war is hell. But it is absolute foolishness for us to be the only ones receiving it.

[The Great RJ]

While I can agree that to some at the time Hitler and the pilots who bombed Pearl Harbor for example were "patriots" acting in the perceieved best interests of their countries. However, this article misses the real point about why Americans are displaying the flag and its colors.

Americans are displaying their patriotism in an unpreceded show of solidarity. Our country was attacked in what can only be described as an act of war. Americans have been stirred by this day of infamy to unite and act as one to preserve what this country stands for-FREEDOM. For the first time since WW-II Americans are standing together and are putting aside all of their differences. The only people that have to fear this kind of patriotism are those who have dared to attack us.

[McGavin999]

Fortunately for this guy, this is America where everyone is entitled to an opinion and has the right to express it. Even this disgusting piece of crap is entitled to his cowardly stance.

He has a right to speak his positions but WE have a right to disagree and to choose not to listen to his irrational ravings. Yeah, that's something we've forgotten over the past 10 years, we have rights too, the right to judge someone by what comes out of their mouths, and the right to decide that someone is too stupid to be teaching children.

[MissAmericanPie]

We can judge him an idiot and not fit to teach, but he is protected and free to infect your children by a powerful union, backed up by a powerful Federal government.

[Semi Civil Servant]

"Even those with less education or those less cynical than I am don't have to think hard to come up with crimes against humanity perpetrated in the name of patriotism." -- C. CUSHING-MURRAY

There are no people with less education than you, Mr./Ms. Cushing-hyphen-Murray. You are at the top of the "invincibly ignorant" list. And, since you learned nothing on 911, you are obviously ineducable.

I pray the students you "teach" haven't been irredeemably infected with the virus of ignorance you witlessly try to spread.

[Illbay]

Nor did I say anything about the flag. I simply said that you must be a "patriot" in order to fully love your country. That's like saying that if you really, truly love your FAMILY, you would even risk your life to defend and protect them.

It's really the same concept.

[Don Myers]

"The displaying of colors alone a patriot does not make."

No, it certainly doesn't. And I fear those patriots who say you either believe this way or you are an enemy of this country.

[MissAmericanPie]

Oh really? Acknowledging the problems inherent in the NEA does not equate to hating government. It certainly is going to have to be turned around on alot of issues including immigration if we are going to prosper.

Go do something useful like clip your toenails.

[MissAmericanPie]

Sorry, I did misread you. I have the flu, I feel awful and I am flustrated that now is the time to really get busy and push for some reforms. It is a window of opportunity that I hate to see close.

[Inyokern]

However repulsive the act was to us, those hijackers were patriots to their people.

Gee, I thought all the Arabs were saying it was wrong. Which is it? Is Bin Laden a nutcase or an Arab patriot?

[aculeus]

Another message from America's Worst Generation.

My message back: you will live to regret your shameful comments.

[Thumper1960]

I love my country and I do fear certain governmental policies.

It is because of those policies that freedom can be threatened. Make no mistake, my flea-witted friend, no stronger lover of nation; no more fearless defender of liberty; no less resolute citizen is he who will gladly suffer any deprivation than the American Patriot.

Without being asked or fearing laws that make illegal the carrying of weaponry of war and defense, the patriotic American stands ready at each workplace; each homestead; each place of congregation, armed and ready to defend the homeland-the motherland- from assault by evil and deranged haters of western ideals.

That, you may count upon without reservation.