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Quickly describing things...anyway...Who can claim to be a patriot?

Hosted by:

- Jesse Fries

https://serve.podhome.fm/anyway_mini_podcast

[00:00:00] Jesse Fries:

This is the AnyWay podcast with your host, Jesse Fries.   Me and the wife are   getting quotes to install   a car charging thing in our   garage there. Now we just need to figure out if we wanna, like, future proof it or if we just wanna make it good for right now. So that's what we're doing right now. Nothing too exciting.   Anyway,   what is a patriot?   Who can claim to be a patriot?   These questions came to mind when a friend said on Facebook, there are a great number of self proclaimed patriots on my friends list, that yada yada yada.   I'm sure you get the gist.  

To define it, Merriam Webster said a patriot is one who loves and supports his or her country.   Oxford   says that a patriot is a person who vigorously supports their country   and is prepared to defend it against enemies or detractors.   Then we come to dictionary.com   who has actually 2 definitions.   The first says, a patriot is a person who loves, supports,   and defends their country   and its interests with devotion.   The other definition of a patriot   in the in dictionary.com   is a person who values individual rights, especially one who attempts to defend those rights against presumed interference   by the federal government.  

Now I could delve into the etymology of the word,   but it is more important for this conversation to understand how   Americans experience   patriotism.   The first sense of patriotism comes from our founding, in which the American colonists called themselves patriots,   even though they were fighting against their government and against their king.   Before our revolution,   Merriam Webster says   that the term was used as a pejorative.   The term patriot was used as a pejorative,   signifying that patriots were anything   but patriotic.   It's kinda like how we say like cool or things like that, the opposite of the word.  

As the American Revolution took off, the revolutionaries   took the pejorative   the pejorative form of   patriot   as a badge of honor, and it is that badge of honor that we use today for our   founding fathers.   We respect the group for willing to give up their lives for the freedoms they fought for against the government that was not listening.   Now we are nearly to   250 years past our declaration of independence.   Patriot   patriotism   with that is harder to define and harder to nail down in today's world.   And this begs the question,   who is the real patriot?  

Is there such a thing?   To me, there are 3 types of patriots in this country   or patriotism.   There's the 4th July patriotism.   There's the governmental patriotism.   And then there's the idealized   patriotism.   With the 4th July   patriotism, this is the yay, America. Yay, our military. Yay, we are the greatest nation on the planet.   This is the patriotism that is taught in elementary school. This is our nationalism.   This is our founding mythology.   This is what pulls us together in times of need, like during Pearl Harbor or 911.   Then you have the governmental patriotism.  

This is the belief that our government is great and if you don't love and support the government, then you are not a patriot.   Then, we have the Idealized Patriot.   This is the belief in the founding of our country   and is tied to the pejorative,   the badge of honor   Patriot.   They are patriotic for the idealized philosophies   of our founding fathers.   This can be seen in people who, with all their heart, believe in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.   Freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly,   the right to bear arms,   the separation of powers,   and all that the founding   fathers gave us.  

All of these are valid forms of patriotism.   The 4th July patriot,   the governmental patriot,   and the idealized   patriot.   And beyond that, they are all needed   for our country and nation to flourish.   We need the 4th July patriotism   to bind us together as a people.   We are, unlike most countries in the the world, a mix of different religions, races, and ideologies,   which come with all the baggage that that brings with it all those differing views.   We need to believe   that what holds us together   and binds us   is this common patriotism,   the 4th July patriotism.  

We also need governmental patriotism to ensure that we as a people flourish. We need people to believe in a strong government to ensure that our founding system and rights are upheld.   We also need the idealized   patriot in order to keep our system doing what the Constitution was designed for.   With every human endeavor, things have a tendency to veer off course,   and it is this idealized   patriotism   that ensures things don't get too far off of course.   At the end of it all, what we need now is more of the 4th July patriotism   to run through our veins.  

We are divided to such an extent that it is hard for some to see the humanity of the other,   And we start throwing slurs back and forth, communist, Nazi.   Please remember, we are a people with a shared history and a shared basic goal.   What is that goal?   To have a better country.   Now this varies from person to person what that better country means,   but please remember   we all want a better country.