How is a man considered a patriot or to be patriotic? Must one hoist a flag, fight in war, assimilate into mass consensus, or hold our president in high esteem regardless of their actions? If so, under these specific precincts, at the time of their activism Martin Luther King Jr., nor Mahatma Ghandi nor, Frances Wright were patriots. I beg to differ.
Patriotism
My eyes felt as if they'd been equipped with paper weights. The force had reached the point where the lids wouldn't be able to resist their crashing together every once in a while. It was early in the morning or late at night, whichever you prefer. I chose late at night. It was approaching two ante meridiem. The monitor did its constant flicker while I pushed the mouse toward the fringe of the foam mousepad which, by this hour, felt nearly fully adhesive. Throughout the course of the night the mouse had instantly began to morph into lead. I surfed through pages and pages of partisan propaganda that had only served to wear my attention span thin until I came across a posting with a question that merely longed for an intelligent answer; one which I was willing to provide, or at least attempt to. I wasn't sure if my answer would be intelligent enough. Nor was I sure if my answer would be thought-provoking as to the posting's subject, nonetheless, I decided to exercise my fingers.
I read the question over and over again in order to try and derive both a knowledgeable and an unpartisan view. This is going to be one hell of an enterprise I thought to myself as I reread the question for the seventh time. But not nearly as big as Jean-Luc's though! I thought again, laughing at my own pointless knowledge. Yet, the question still stuck out on the screen like a sore thumb.
"Could a young man refuse to register for the draft and still be patriotic?"
This question had arisen because of a new panic over whether or not Selective Service would be executively used to its full legal capabilities as it had been regularly from the late nineteen forties to the late nineteen sixties. Personally, I didn't think the draft would resurface. However, as I skimmed through a few more pages of similarly aimed lexica, it was evident that people weren't about to blue-pencil that infamous "d-word" from their thoughts.
Nor was I.
With regards to this question, I had solidified some sort of an answer; so, I began to type.
"Why, of course a young man could refuse to register for the draft and still be patriotic! Patriotism does not mean..."
I stopped, hit backspace a few times and started over, this time with diction yielding a not-so-confrontational outlook.
"What an arbitrary question to ask: "could a young man refuse to register for the draft and still be patriotic?" Of course a young man who refuses to enlist in the draft can still be patriotic. Patriotism is not merely hoisting a flag outside one's domicile, not letting it touch the ground, and haughtily boasting its presence in tandem with supporting whatever the current President and other elected officials say. Patriotism is exercising your right to vote; patriotism is being informed about what is going on in your country, state, and neighborhood; patriotism is to pursue your own beliefs, as conventional or radical as they may be; patriotism is doing what you believe is right for your country. The former is superficial patriotism, or, wittily, materialistic patriotism, while the latter is profound patriotism, one might even deem reflective patriotism. If a young man believes that a war is not just, righteous, or unethical, how can one label his actions as being unpatriotic? He, in fact, is patriotic. Has the young man not placed his nation above all others when looking out for the safety of his fellow compatriots? Has the young man not pursued what he believes in, especially, in what he believes his country should do? He certainly has. This man, markedly, does not believe in the loss of life for a meaningless cause. He has prioritized life. Others might place war above life, even, in lieu of it. Ergo, these men are both patriots, even though they reside at opposite ends of the ideological and political spectrum. A young man in the 1790s, in the 1960s, or even in the 2030s can refuse such an ordeal if he believes it harms our country in any such way and still be considered a patriotic."
Essentially, I'd finished my response to the question, however, I felt the need to inject some stimulating statement or question, or something, to conclude it. Accordingly, I thought of the most politically controversial matter I could excavate from my cobwebbed psyche: totalitarianism.
"Now, I have a pair of questions for all of you to muse over: Was Benito Mussolini not a patriot, was Adolf Hitler; was Mao Zedung; was Joseph Stalin? Is Fidel Castro not a patriot; is Kim Il-Sung; is Hu Jintao; is Omar al-Bashir? All of the above men were or currently are totalitarian leaders in their respective countries and all dearly loved or love them. Although their means of expressing motherland love through engineered mass famines, conducted unremitting stages of social chaos, and foisted poverty, to name a few, were and are undoubtedly questionable in nature, logic, and ethic, to say the least, are these men not as patriotic as those of us who vote, demonstrate, and hang flags outside our homes?"
Lastly, I hit 'enter', hoping that my posting would catch the eyes of another.
