MDDM background: patriotism

[Doug Millison]

Dissent In Pursuit Of Equality, Life, Liberty And Happiness
An Interview With Historian Howard Zinn

Sharon Basco is executive producer of TomPaine.com.

Howard Zinn is an historian and author of A People's History of the United
States. Sharon Basco interviewed him for TomPaine.com.

TomPaine.com: Dissent these days seems to be a dirty word. The Bush
administration has, at least since September 11th, usually termed any
criticism of its policies "unpatriotic."

Howard Zinn: While some people think that dissent is unpatriotic, I would
argue that dissent is the highest form of patriotism. In fact, if
patriotism means being true to the principles for which your country is
supposed to stand, then certainly the right to dissent is one of those
principles. And if we're exercising that right to dissent, it's a patriotic
act.

One of the great mistakes made in discussing patriotism -- a very common
mistake -- is to think that patriotism means support for your government.
And that view of patriotism ignores the founding principles of the country
expressed in the Declaration of Independence. That is: the Declaration of
Independence makes it clear that governments are artificial creations set
up to achieve certain ends -- equality, life, liberty, the pursuit of
happiness -- and when governments become destructive of those ends it is
the right of the people in the words of the Declaration, to alter or
abolish the government.

In other words, obedience to government certainly is not a form of
patriotism. Governments are the instruments to achieve certain ends. And if
the government goes against those ends, if the government is not defending
our liberties, but is diminishing our liberties, if the government is
sending young people into war or making war which is unjustified, well then
the government is not following the principles of caring about life,
liberty and pursuit of happiness. When the government is taking huge sums
of money from education and health, and using that money for military
purposes, that's a violation of the principles of the Declaration of
Independence. And a government like that cannot be obeyed. To obey a
government like that is not being patriotic. At that point, when a
government behaves like that, it is the most patriotic thing to disobey the
government. [...]



...continues
http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/5908