I overlooked the truest and most honorable of the contributors to The Nation's collection of July 4th thoughts. Floyd Abrams, a Constitutional lawyer had a message that much of the Left needs to hear:
"The left has always had a problem with patriotism. . . But as a general matter the left seems sour on America and more sour still about patriotism.
More's the pity. It's not that the right hasn't routinely substituted flag-waving for reason. Or even that a dumb, smug and myopic sort of Americanism hasn't been used to justify every national sin of which we've been capable. But none of that even begins to excuse the disdain with which the left greets even a tip of a patriotic hat. . .
Why, then, the resistance on the left to patriotic appeals? Why such a crabbed view of Americanism at its best? . . . What the left criticizes about America is often worth criticizing. Its unwillingness to celebrate what we offer the world at our best--and to call that patriotism--is not to its intellectual or moral credit."
Posted by Discoshaman at juillet 5, 2005 04:41 AM | TrackBack
"Patriotism is the veneration of real estate over principle." -G.B. Shaw
Food for thought, anyway.
Posted by: The Liberal Media at juillet 6, 2005 02:10 PM