FLAG
Today is July 4th, 2008, a day that Americans celebrate our Nations Independence from Great Britains' patriarchal rule, as our forefathers declared this INDEPENDENCE - Patriotism was born... “Peace Candles” is an endeavor begun last fall with the inspiration and collaboration of “Positively Empathetic and Actively Compassionate Energies that Cared enough to Assemble, as Nurturers Demonstrating their Loving and Evolving Spirits”….peacefully acknowledging the need for our, “R”evolution, through ‘being the CHANGE’. The issues of our collective concerns were truths uncovered or explored about the strategies and tactics of this “Land of the Free”, we call the USA (United States of America) whom throughout our history has risen and fallen militarily, politically, economically, territorially and mostly ideologically – in what we call “PATRIOTISM”. In the simplest definition, patriotism is clearly a love for or a devotion to one’s country… As Patriots, do we… Support the values America was founded on? Stay informed and VOTE? Protect and Voice our civil liberties? Sustain our future generations’ chances at survival? Stay willing to die for a cause that is noble and honorable? http://fw.members.freewebs.com/freewebs.com/peacecandles “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.” Abraham Lincoln Recently, our Presidential candidates decided to ‘weigh in’ and define what patriotism means to them. Senator John McCain went back to the very beginning, quoting our greatest statesmen, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. He accounted for the vices of human nature and touted our limitless horizons in idealism, love of liberty and united in a cause larger than our individual interests. “Putting the Country First” is how we are to be genuine patriots, remembering we love the countrymen we will never know, who will be born after we are gone, according to McCain, replicating the spirit of our founding age. “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” Thomas Jefferson Senator Barack Obama’s gut instinct that rooted and wove the American ideal throughout his lifetimes’ experiences, not in abstract, but love and/or “faith in one another as Americans.” He explains the liberty we defend, is the liberty of each of us to follow our dreams, the equality we seek, and the country’s achievements resulting from the toil, drive, struggle, restlessness, humor, and quiet heroism of the American people, whose fates are wrapped up in the fates of all who share allegiance to America’s singular creed (which he failed to elaborate on). “Patriotism… for rulers is nothing else than a tool for achieving their power-hungry and money-hungry goals, and for the ruled it means renouncing their human dignity, reason, conscience, and slavish submission to those in power. Patriotism is slavery.” Leo Tolstoy 1894 In Andy Rooney’s “My War”, he accounts his WWII experience as the Stars & Stripes correspondent and describes, “Life is real at war, concentrated and intense.” But his definition of patriotism resonated in a very strange way… “Patriotism is rampant in war and there are some good things about it. Just as self-respect and pride bring out the best in an individual, pride in family, pride in teammates, and pride in hometown bring out the best in groups of people. War brings out the kind of pride in country that encourages them to be ready to die for it. At no time do people work so well together to achieve the same goal as they do in wartime. Maybe that’s enough to make patriotism eligible to be considered a virtue. If only I could get out of my mind the most patriotic people who ever lived, the Nazi Germans.” “The people are urged to be patriotic… by sacrificing their own children. Patriotism requires allegiance to the flag, which means obedience and readiness to kill father, mother, brother, sister.” Emma Goldman In General Douglas MacArthurs’ farewell address to Congress, in 1951, he clearly defined his patriotism or service to our country. With the infamous quote as he closed a 52 year military career, “Old soldiers never die; they just fade away.” In this televised speech, he defended distorted positions and accusations of being a warmonger with, “Nothing could be further from the truth. I know war as few other men now living know it, and nothing to me is more revolting. I have long advocated its complete abolition, as its very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a means of settling international disputes.” And like the old soldier of that ballad, he closed his military career, faded away on April 5, 1964, in New York, an old soldier who tried to do his duty as God gave him the light to see that duty. “The most noble fate a man can endure is to place his own mortal body between his loved home and the war’s desolation.” Robert Heinlein Which PATRIOT describes your ideals…?
