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!
by Bosch Fawstin
