A friend of mine recently posted on Face Book the following:
"Everybody!!!!!!!, let's do this (and NBC, this one's for you!). We should flood Facebook with this. "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands: one nation under GOD, indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all". RE-POST IF YOU THINK GOD, OUR COUNTRY, OUR FLAG, AND OUR MILITARY DESERVE RESPECT"
I thought this was worth sharing and re-posted it on my Face Book profile page and received the following response from a friend:
"Conceit, arrogance, and egotism are the essentials of patriotism. ... Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who have had the fortune of being born on some particular spot, consider themselves better, nobler, grander, more intelligent than the living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill, and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all the others." Emma Goldman, Patriotism: a menace to liberty
To which I replied:
"This argument of Emma's is the same argument I remember reading in Mein Kampf. It is a useful tool, as an argument, because it assigns negative values to a construct ( basically name calling ) and then verbally bashes the assigned negative values.
Patriotism in America should be: the defense of a group of people who have organized themselves into a self governing body under the declaration of equality and of inalienable, God given, rights. Defending liberty ( the right to do good) and justice for all (the right to have your actions judged by a group of your peers under laws that do not respect "persons") is American Patriotism, regardless of what Emma Goldman thinks. Perhaps she has patriotism confused with militarism?"
It is my fervent payer that God will inspire American's everywhere with this form of American Patriotism.
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