WHAT MAKES A TRUE PATRIOT
The true patriot is the one who loves the heart and soul of his country. In America --the nation whose essence is said to be an idea-- that heart and soul is the system of government given us by our Founders and the democratic spirit embedded in it. It is that system and that spirit that have allowed Americans, for more than two centuries, to live as free people in a society that, by the standards of human history, has been reasonably decent.
The true patriots are not defined by their enthusiasm for the victories of American militarists, but by their devotion to those principles for which –as we declare every Memorial Day– so many Americans have laid down their lives: principles of limited government, human rights, and the rule of law.
THIS IS THE VERY THREAT OUR FOUNDERS WARNED US AGAINST
Now there has arisen --from within the American political system-- the very kind of threat that our Founders feared most: a lawless and usurpatious presidency systematically assaulting our constitutional system.
The picture of presidential lawlessness could not be clearer. The case has been made powerfully and in detail by responsible and knowledgeable Americans-- by people like Bruce Fein, Elizabeth de la Vega, Glenn Greenwald, John Dean. They show the unmistakable pattern of conduct by which the heart of America --"a nation of laws, not of men"-- is being destroyed by this Bush regime.
(There's no point here in going through the litany of lies and crimes and usurpations that are already fully exposed in news accounts, in books, in court findings. Anyone who has been paying attention --and is willing to know this dark truth-- must by now not know it. And anyone genuinely seeking such knowledge can readily find it.)
This is the very danger the Constitution was created to counter. The whole structure our Founders gave us was organized to help Americans prevent precisely what this regime has been doing.
And now we can see: at all the levels of the American body politic, America has failed to rouse itself to fight the battle our Founders intended for us to fight.
The people have failed. The free press has failed. And now we can see clearly that the Congress has failed. America has proved itself unworthy of the heritage handed down to us.
THE FAILURE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE
Our Founders knew that we, the people, would need to embody "republican virtue" to be the kind of citizenry required to preserve such a noble experiment as the American democracy. We would need to practice the "eternal vigilance" that is the price of liberty. We would have to be ready, in Jefferson's words again, to refresh "the tree of liberty with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
We the people, in the face of this brazen crimes and lies of this Bush regime, should have been out in the streets in our millions. We should have been raising a deafening hue and cry, demanding our America back.
But, except for a relatively small fringe, the American people have stood by and let our birthright as free Americans be stolen from us. (And nearly a third of us still regards loyalty to this criminal ruling group to be a virtue-- enough to hold an entire political party hostage to this evil.)
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