>
>At 12:37 PM 5/31/02 -0400, Doug Henwood wrote:
>>kelley at pulpculture.org wrote:
>>
>>>whose been on the Love America side, eh?
>>
>>You, Nathan, and Justin come right to mind. (And I'm sure that among the
>>300+ lurkers there are sympathizers.) The Hate America crowd is no larger.
>>
>>Doug
I'm no flag waver, and I don't demand a Pledge before I hear criticisms of the USA. But Kells asked, who can say, and mean it, a bunch of good things about this country, and I said me. I'm not, as Gordon put it, an Alien, I belong here. There's a lot I don't like either, which is why I'm on the left. But I actually got choked up when I visited Little Round Top on the Gettysburg battlefield a few years ago, and saw flowers heaped where Joshua Chamberlains' 20th Maine Volunteers held off Hoods Alabamans and Texans the second day of the battle, then charged with bayonets with they were out of ammo, probably saving the Union. I was surprised as anyone. I guess that makes me a patriot. Course I was also choked up when I saw the flowers in the Museum der Widerstand in Berlin, in the old Wermacht HQ, heaped on the site where the Nazis executed von Stauffenberg and the main July 20 conspirators.
Patriotism doesn't have to be a competitive thing, we're number 1, best country in the world. Rah rah. That sort of statement is meaningless. When I mean by patriotism is that this is _my_ country, and I'll fight for it, dammit, and not let a bunch of right wing low down slime ball hoodlums and thugs in three piece suits or sheets and hoods exploit my countrypeople and the world in my name. I'll subscribe to Woody Guthrie's sort of patriotism: this land is your land, this land is my land, this land belongs to you and me. If that makes me a bad leftist and a national chauvinist, so be it.
Does that answer your question, Carrol?
jks
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