Defiant! Patriotism Defined!

In the election campaign in progress, the issue of patriotism is on high boil. What is it?

The Oxford Shorter Dictionary (2002) defines patriotism as "Devotion to country" and the "quality of being patriotic" which means "devoted to the well-being or interests of one's country."

What is devotion? Devoted is defined in the same dictionary as "vowed, dedicated, consecrated" and "Zealously or exclusively attached to, given up to." Devotion then is "the fact or quality of being devoted to a person, cause, pursuit, etc.; earnest application; zealous or exclusive application to a use or a purpose."

Is anyone questioning McCain's patriotism? I don't think so. I have heard no one questioning him in this regard.

While in the North Vietnamese prison, he chose to be his word and remain in prison rather than leave his fellow soldiers and violate an oath which he took. He was further tortured to the point that he doesn't have full use of his arm and leg. In his speeches, you can hear his call for us to devote ourselves to our country too. I am not a subscriber to self-sacrifice and don't agree with his premises that the government has the right to control citizens' economic activity, but I don't doubt the regard he has for our country and for this I appreciate him.

What about Obama?

"Let me be clear: I will let no one question my love of this country."

Got it. Devotion is not a word he uses now or will ever use.

I have to tell you, Obama's authoritarian "decree" has not a shred of validity in a free country where the Right to Freedom of Speech is My Right to My Life - as it is for every American. Here he being more radical Muslim than American. This is something they do and then proceed tear things up. Remember the cartoons? And thank you, Ezra Levant, for YOUR heroism. For this reason, it had to be said!

McCain touches the sacred in this realm. Obama does not.

And, he cannot. His history is filled with influences and actions dedicated to division and the installation of laws where individual rights are rendered meaningless and maybe even evil. In the Declaration of Independence it is declared for all the world to hear that "We hold these Truths to be self-evident that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed . . . with certain unalienable Rights among these are the Rights to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness . . . "

Granted, the country was begun with the institution of slavery, but with the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement of the Sixties, finally all laws instituting racial discrimination were removed from the books. What was left? Freedom. Political freedom.

And that should be all there is to this story. To institute laws favoring one man over another in his circumstances institutes once again the human bondage this country has struggled against and ultimately eradicated.

Once the legal restrictions were erased, then what is left are all the internalized premises and manifestations that were the result of slavery and Jim Crow but which don't work in a condition of political freedom. These matters work out over time. Individuals and organizations give up the irrational premises because they don't work and alter their manifestations. These are being worked out now and will continue so long as the government maintains the rights of individuals.

Obama, given his choice of church and its advocacy of the Black Liberation Theology, has sided with the reinstitution of slavery. He has had an extended relationship via the Chicago Annenberg Challenge and its projects with the domestic terrorist, William Ayers, who is unrepentant in his hatred of the American system of capitalism and who seeks to institute reverse slavery. Then he got involved with Tony Rezko, a crooked "user", now-convicted developer who, in the name of repairing and improving public housing but ultimately causing its further deterioration to the detriment of the inhabitants, to gain money and valuable connections for pursuing his political ambitions. Beyond that, the dictums and methods of Saul Alinsky, the powerful community organizer guru, influenced by Karl Marx, who advocated gaining power by any means required to get it held intellectual and motivational sway in the law firms and groups with who Obama allied himself.

All of these activities are "me/us over them" activities, oblivious that there is a larger context, such as the one Martin Luther King appealed to, that can include the whole of the country and all people.

Would you conclude that Obama is patriotic?

Ambitious? Yes. Willing to go for it? Yes. Patriotic? You can be nice if you want to, but I say NO!

Voting

I've been speaking out against Obama and people are getting that I don't want him for my President. This is true. But then, they ask, "McCain isn't much of a leader either, so what does he have worth voting for?"

First of all as of now there are three candidates for whom to vote: Obama, McCain and Barr of the Libertarian Party. I rule out the Libertarian Party because of its flawed base and its existence only makes the battle for liberty harder, not easier. I would much rather distinguish the liberty position from the statist positions of the Democrats and the Republicans than I would from the anarchist and amoral positions of the Libertarians.

I dislike Obama because I'm convinced that he will say anything, do anything and be anything to get and keep, when he gets it, power. I do not think he is a saint nor do I think he will ascend into those blue skies and white puffy clouds on his website unless he disintegrates before our eyes - which he is really working to have happen.

I definitely do not trust his Marxist past - 20 years sitting in a Black Liberation Theology church listening to a rabid racist preacher who, while a free man in the United States, is willing to blame America to its roots including the very principles of individual rights on which it is founded. I'm not willing to give those up, are you? For what? So one man or a group of men can dominate and force you by law, and you have no founding document of your individual rights on which to build your case?

Reverend Wright is about revenge not freedom. There is nothing to make up when you are free. Life begins anew and you are free to make of it what you can. That is as good as it gets in a political system. If you don't rise to the occasion, you designate yourself a victim and then you have to get back. To gain power to now dominate someone else is invalid as a workable idea and can only lead to war and rumors of war.

Included in Obama's Marxist past is his association with the domestic terrorists, Ayers and Dohrn, who subscribe to the same Marxist beliefs. Marxism is about class warfare. It is about setting one man against another in principle. It justifies any kind of violence based on one's prefabricated victim status. It leads nowhere. Countries set up on that principle have failed or will fail. (I can see it now if Obama is President. He invites Ayers and Dohrn to the White House. They, who have bemoaned that they never caused as much destruction as they would have liked, leave a package in a cloak closet. Boom! I do think this idea is silly, but I'm pointing up the inconsistency of a victim who wants to right a wrong by force when there is a civil mechanism to do so. Since Obama throws Wright and Ayers under the bus, can we get a promise out of him that he will never invite them to the White House? )

I don't want any of this governing our country and I don't want any of this choosing our Supreme Court judges. Simple as that.

This leaves McCain. McCain does not hold my view of government as the protector of individual rights. He definitely is a statist. There are two things that I like about McCain. He is able to articulate his claims on our lives in terms of sacrifice for the country and for all of us. Obama articulates his claims on our lives in terms of sacrifice for the poor and the least among us. Obama sets up the class warfare situation and McCain does not. I consider this difference a plus for McCain. (Under my Favorite Websites and Links see "From Each According to His Ability..." as a demonstration of the consequences to a society that sets up this principle.)

Next, I think McCain, if he does what he says he will do, will choose Supreme Court judges that are originalists - that is people who will interpret the Constitution based on the principles that generated it and are displayed there. (I, by the way, do not see an originalist as anti-abortion. I know many people do. I consider the right to abortion as the woman's right to her body and thus a derivative of her right to her life. A fetus, until it is born and has independent existence, is a function of her body and her life. It is absurd to claim that a fetus has a right to life which then sets up, in principle, a conflict of rights. There are no conflicts regarding rights. When she gets pregnant, she does not become the property of and thus under the direction of the state. Her body is her property - her fundamental property. Pregnancy does not convert her into a slave. The religious fundamentalist be damned on this point!) Developing law based on the principle of individual rights is vitally important to our getting our freedoms back. They are ours by right. Until this gets straightened out, we are not free. This is a vital issue.

So at this point, I'm voting for McCain.

You notice, I have not mentioned the war. I don't think either one of the candidates are going to abandon the results that we have achieved in the Middle East. I don't think it is the distinguishing issue. I do think that McCain will be a more capable Commander-in-Chief than will Obama. I think he can stand, if he has to, by a decision that can get unpopular. I don't see that quality in Obama.