Kerry on Huffpo : How to Love Your Country

<> For today's Independance Day, Senator John Kerry - our last, next President - has submitted an inspiring Huffington Post commentary on what loving your country truly means. Not the kind of child-like tantrum filled love of the right, but a mature love that understand that our country is not perfect, and the that only path to improvement involves honesty, humility, courage and conviction. Harkening back to his days as a protesting Vietnam Veteran, Senator Kerry sets the tone.

When we protested the war in Vietnam some would weigh in against us saying: "My country right or wrong." Our response was simple: "Yes, my country right or wrong.
When right, keep it right and when wrong, make it right."

I feel history repeating itself.

He slams the Senate for shirking it's responsibilities.

What did the United States Senate do before leaving town for the 4th of July break? In a summer when things are decidedly not right for American soldiers in harm's way in Iraq and Afghanistan, while their families at home are hit with record gas prices, health care costs a mess, and veterans still go without the health care they were promised, did we unite in some big hearted cause to make these urgent challenges right?

No. We debated a craven effort to amend the Constitution allegedly to protect the flag we all love. The Senate -- the place the original patriots -- the Founding Fathers -- imagined as the place big national issues would be addressed out of love of country, became a place where the Constitution itself was nearly shredded for political convenience, for ideology, for short term political gain and political timidity.

On Patriotism.

That's why I get so angry to see politics -- again and again -- fail to live up to our flag, and to our values -- in the way politics too often has become a food-fight, in the way news is too often treated as mere entertainment, in the way millions tune out because they're so sickened by what's happening they've given up on the idea of changing it.

We desperately need a real debate about patriotism -- about service, about American values.

We don't need another series of phony debates about whether we love our country, we need an injection of honesty about how to love our country.

I think patriotism starts with telling the truth. Truth is the American bottom line. I don't think it's an accident that among the first words of the first declaration of our national existence it is proclaimed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident...".

On Speaking out, particularly when what you have to say isn't particularly popular (See New York Times)

Patriotism also means dissent -- when it's hardest. The bedrock of America's greatest advances--the foundation of what we know today are defining values--was formed not by cheering on things as they were, but by taking them on and demanding change.

He speaks to the ramifications of the Hamdan Decision.

Patriotism demands we debate how we live by our principles and our values in the world. America has always embraced the best traditions of civilized conduct toward combatants and non-combatants in war. But does anyone think we're well served when leaders hold themselves above the law--in the way they not only treat prisoners in Abu Ghraib, but assert unchecked power to spy on American citizens? The Supreme Court certainly doesn't!

And on the President.

Patriotism demands telling the truth to Americans -- America can handle the truth about the Administration's boastful claim of "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq. The true pessimists are those who cannot accept that America's power and prestige depend on our credibility at home and around the world -- and the most dangerous defeatists, the most are those who invoke September 11th to argue that our traditional values are a luxury we can no longer afford.

But it's more than that. It's not just what we fight against, but what we fight for. Patriotism means not just ending this war, but preventing the next one -- to act now so that at some future date America will never have to fight for its economic security because we are permanently held hostage to foreign oil. Patriotism ought to be commanding us for the second time in our history to declare and win our independence, this time not from foreign rule but from foreign oil. To live out the patriotism of Abraham Lincoln who said we were the "last best hope of Earth," leaders should be insisting that we stop being the denier of global warming that endangers the Earth. Al Gore is a patriot this Fourth of July who is living out that kind of love of country -- and we need more like him.

I only have a short commentary of my own, I think John said quite well what I felt for quite some time. In the aftermath of Hamdan I feel energized and rejuvinated. The SCOTUS has put a door stopper between us and the tipping point of knee-jerk, gingoistic, neo-fascist doom.

As Devilstower has laid out so wonderfully in They Think We're Orcs, and as Hunter has exposed the people we oppose will stop at nothing, to see that their dark, homophobic, racist, angry, fearful, brutally violent and religiously crazed vision of America becomes a permanent reality.

But we can stop them.

We can bring America back to it's true roots in the Enlightment. The first age where men began to seriously codify that the primary task of the state and government was to protect the freedom and libery of it's citizens - not to rule over them.

So let us celebrate this Independance Day, and recall truly and clearly the vision of the American Fore Fathers - and pledge together that we will commit ourselves to ensuring that we will not let their vision be destroyed in blind ignorance and fear. We will not let those who wish to wrap themselves in the flag and proclaim that it should be held sacred and sancrosanct - while they simultaneously destroy the very values that it respresents - accomplish their mission.

I love America. Warts, Imperfections and All. I love what it is, and I love what it could become, if we simply have the courage to make it live up to it's promise. For me this day, Independance Day, is the most holy of American days, and this is our prayer - one which I know is shared with many in the faith (or athiesm/agnosticism) of their preference in this country where we have freedom of religion as well as freedom from Religion.

We hold these truths to be self-evident - that all men are created equal, and are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights....

Amen.

I stand with Kerry, I stand with Gore - I stand with you if you will only stand up and fight for life, justice and freedom, even if that means protecting that which you hate.

Vyan