figured some would want to see this...my dad wrote me a 3 page essay while in baltimore about "being a patriot" and it seemed appropriate to put on this board around this holiday...here is part of it
"I am an American...a proud American. I love the flag and the ideals for which it stands. It angers me when others seek to desecrate the flag and our country by their actions. I think our freedom can, indeed, be a beacon of hope to the world. But we have some serious issues that must be addressed before we can even dare to hold ourselves out as an example.
First, we need to understand our heritage. The founders were men and women of courage and vision. They set up a government that provides a system of checks and balances so that power could not concentrate into the hands of a particular group, even an elected, official group. When powerful leaders today say that the Courts should not interfere with the "prerogatives" of the Executive they demonstrate a fundamental misunderstanding of this system and hostility to it. That is a desecration to the ideals behind our flag.
The Founders were wise enough to know that they would not have all the specific answers to all the social issues that would confront their new country as it matured. Therefore they wrote broadly and constructed a system that would allow interpretation and revision so that the principles of "Life, liberty and pursuit of happiness" could live on into the centuries to come. They would be proud to know that we are beginning to discover that their vision of freedom for all white adult males is really too narrow to do justice to their grand experiment and needs to be extended. When Americans decry the "activist judges" who extend that freedom to our brothers and sisters of color or of different faiths, they spit on the vision of the Founders.
From the first, the vision for our country was based on an educated, involved citizenry. Jefferson had much to say about the "yeoman" farmer- plowing his fields by day and reading and learning in the firelight by night. Without this commitment to informed citizenship our system will not work. When folks who have never read Roe v. Wade or Abington Township v. Schempp or the "pledge of allegiance cases" announce that they are against those decisions and will not support any judiial nominee who will not work to reverse them, they dishonor the Founders' vision.
There are ten amendments in the Bill of Rights. True patriots believe in all ten of them- not just a narrow reading of the second one. They also understand, as did the Founders, that those rights have little meaning if they extend only to those who agree with us. It is when the right to counsel is extended to someone who looks guilty of a crime, when the freedom of religion is extended to a radical, when the freedom of speech is extended to the person critical of the government that those rights actually mean something. So, talk show hosts who belittle and shout down guests simply because they dare to disagree with them or people who boycott a music group because they don't share their political views, don't understand what our freedom is all about. Because we are free we should not silence even the intolerant but we should recognize their narrow, impoverished view of our freedom for what it is."
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