"Dissent Is Patriotic"
Dean
A friend at work recently told me, "dissent is patriotic." On yeah? Really?
"All men are rapists at heart."
"America is a vile Nazi fascist state."
"Black people are sub-human scum."
"The Jew should be exterminated. He's a threat to all of us."
"Christians are oppressors by nature."
"Fags get what they deserve."
"I hate all those yellow slant-eyed bastards."
"Women should be seen and not heard."
"The greatest threat to freedom in the world today is the United States of America."
"White people aren't really human."
"Canadians are stupid."
Other than the statement about Canadians (which all right-thinking people agree with), I have to ask: which of the above notions, all of which dissent from the American mainstream, are patriotic?
Or is all of this dissent patriotic?
Related Posts (on one page):
- Speaking of Patriotism...
- Dissent and Patriotism
- "Dissent Is Patriotic"
Would you also state that a defense attorney who represents an accused terrorist is unpatriotic?
--|PW|--
A defense attorney who represents a terrorist, has moved beyond expression and into action against conventional wisdom or the government line. I invite you to consider whether that action is in the same class as activities your question.
--|PW|--
PW, a defense attorney does his or her job representing a client. That job is to make the prosecution prove its case, and that is the only job of the attorney. A defense counsel is not dissenting from anything, does not have to believe the client is innocent, can even disagree with the client's beliefs. Far from acting against the government, a defense counsel is acting in a constitutionally mandated role.
Your example is a poor one.
Legal ethics permit an attorney to refuse to representa client on the ground that the client's behavior, etc., are morally repugnant.
Let's suppose that the defense attorney actively seeks out accused terrorists and represents them. What then?
--|PW|--
They lied.
Indeed, they gave you a sledgehammer and said, "destroy this soapbox you stand upon."
Your neutrality does not exist. Your objectivity does not exist. Yes, your--our--first amendment gives you every right to say whatever you say. It also gives me the freedom to call you out and say "bullshit, you're not on our side and I know it!"
The man who defends Adolph Hitler in open court is NOT a patriot. He's doing a job required of him, and he is rather depressed about it because he knows he is being--at the very least--an asshole.
And the First amendment gives me the right to call him an asshole.
They lied to you in J-school, Penny. They taught you that being "neutral" between fascists and communists and other enemies of freedom is patriotism. THEY WERE LIARS. It's bullshit. Defending such monsters is a heavy burden and an obligation, NOT an expression of patriotism.
--|PW|--
There are plenty of people like that everywhere. They have always existed, taking shelter under their nations while dealing with their nation's enemies for whatever reason, ideological or monetary.*
No, they are not nobly dissenting. They are not that honest. As I said earlier - look at the content of the dissent to see whether it is patriotic. Dissent is merely dissent and anyone can heckle. A patriotic dissent is constructive criticism, something I have heard little of from the groves of academe, or elsewhere, in my short time.
*The reasons are immaterial. Doing evil for money is just as evil as doing evil for ideology. A villian is a villian, and a jackel is a jackel.
The statement, "Not all dissent is patriotic" is not the logical equivalent of "All dissent is not patriotic" or even "Only not dissenting is patriotic".
Not A then B is not the same as A then Not B or Only A then B.
Dissent and patriotism are completely independent of each other.
BK
This behavior would have been dissent. Does anyone seriously believe it would have been patriotic?
Note that I use the phrase "appears to be." I used that qualifier because I hoped to evoke -- from Dean himself -- either an endorsement of that conclusion, a refutation of that conclusion, or (ideally) a clarification of his position.
--|PW|--
Really ... is an ad hominem all that you have? You appear convinced that I am some sort of quisling who will sit idly by as the commies take over Congress, the courts, the White House, and the NFL.
If it's any comfort, I will see to it that you're treated humanely after the Worker's Revolution. I will see to it that you aren't subjected to Christina Aguilera. Instead, you will merely have to listen to The O'Franken Factor.
Your attack on my motivation, character, and beliefs borders on the ridiculous; moreover, it fails to address the substance of any arguments that I have raised, or that I may raise.
Honestly, I expect a little more of you.
--|PW|--
1. relatively timeless - i.e. a person believing that definition 100 years ago would just a situation roughly the same as person today, conditional on the information available to them
2. country independent - knowing what it means, it would apply in North Korea, France, the U.S., Singapore etc.
3. objectively discernible - i.e. two people looking at the same situation should come to the same recommended position most of the time regardless of who they happen to be
4. internally consistent - given a situation you can't come to two different contradictory conclusions - another way to do this is if two different aspects of the definition apply and give contradictory recommendations - it tells you which one gets higher priority
5. useful - you can look at a difficult situation and your definition will give you guidance on how to resolve it.
Here are some test cases:
1. A german soldier during the Third Reich is given orders to shoot an innocent Rom. Is it patriotic to shoot or not?
2. Two Canadians argue in the 1940's over whether the country should become more independent of England - being Canadian can mean being part of the Commonwealth or it may be independent.
3. Oliver North allegedly tried to protect the security of the United States, but also allegedly lied to the elected representatives of the United States. Is it more important to protect the lives of U.S. citizens, the principles they believe in (e.g. the constitution), the territorial integrity of the country etc etc.
Without a definition the discussion seems to be completely arbitrary. The point is not to have an opinion on the test cases, the point is to have a set of principles that inform that opinion.
I read at least one case in which a soldier participated in the atrocities because he knew that if he refused, he would be killed ... after watching his superior officer commit the atrocity anyway.
A cold, dehumanizing moral calculus.
--|PW|--
Dean states:
But is he necessarily un-patriotic? Or is he some kind of traitor? That answer, I think, comes from Mike:
Fair enough. I invited Mike to consider a permutation of this, and he stated:
That strikes me as a slight oversimplification of motives, but, again, it is fair enough. Although, I could see somebody who, for example, is related to an accused terrorist by marriage or blood representing that person in court not opportunistically, but simply because there are certain things you do for family. Blood thicker than water, and all that jazz.
But Mike also defines what might be termed "patriotic dissent:"
This definition, I think, is a starting point for what constitutes "patriotic dissent." But let me try to add a philosophical underpinning.
Patriotism is generally defined as "love of country." By corollary, patriotism encompasses the virtue of good citizenship, that is fulfilling the obligations of citizenship, whether those obligations are explicit or implicit.
In the United States of America, the freedoms of citizenship include the right to vote and the right to free expression. By corollary, those freedoms include the responsibility to use them to influence the political process.
Then again, in times of war, the obligations of good citizenship also require that an individual lend his support to that war.
Now, in the lead-up to a war and in the conduct of the war, a citizen who disagrees with the lead-up and conduct has two choices:
1. He can remain silent about his objections and thus breach his obligation to participate honestly in the political process; or,
2. He can voice his opinions, and thus breach his obligation of loyalty to his country in time of war.
Obviously, the choice is not quite as binary as that; there are degrees of silence, degrees of objection, and degrees of patriotism.
But it seems to me that a person who chooses to participate in the political process, by ballot box or by expression, has chosen a course that is not necessarily necessarily unpatriotic, and may, in fact, be patriotic, depending on his stance and his methods.
Joining a large protest march that defaces government property? Distinctly unpatriotic and unhelpful.
Visiting the enemy and posing with a piece of anti-aircraft artillery? Distinctly unpatriotic and worthy of scorn.
Sitting peacefully in the town square and passing out literature? Perhaps not inherently patriotic, but hardly worthy of venom and outrage.
Screaming "fascist" and "murderer" at every opportunity? Unhelpful.
Protesting a war's cost by leading a march of mothers and families of veterans who have died in that conflict? By participating in such a march? A close call, but I would be loath to characterize it as inherently unpatriotic.
The problem with Dean's initial post on this topic is that it is a reductio ad absurdum that invites the readers to endorse or reject outlandish statements as unpatriotic, all in order to assualt the basic thesis that "dissent is unpatriotic." Trying to debate on those terms, I think, is a fool's exercise.
--|PW|--
Mowbray, a reporter for the National Review, was detained by the State Department because he asked questions about the State Department's Visa Express program. Under the Visa Express program, Saudis were allowed to enter the country without a background check. 5 of the 19 Sept. 11th hijackers entered the country through this program.
After much State Department resistance, the Visa Express program ended in 2002.
The state department is currently making another great effort to relax Saudi-US visa standards. Their goal is to raise the number of Saudi visitors and students to the US. Currently, they're back to pre-9/11 levels.
In my opinion, Mowbray's dissent was very patriotic.
Elizabeth got it right. But let me pose this one: "Dissent is very American."
BK
Nah. Dissent is dissent. The end.
I dissent from every single one of the Communist and Nazi (the two are the same thing as far as I'm concerned) statements that Dean quoted attacking men, women, blacks, whites, Jews, Christians, homosexuals, etc.. I disagree with and despise every one of those lies. Furthermore, I will note that it is and has long been a key CommuNazi strategy to pit men against women, whites against blacks, Gentiles against Jews, heterosexuals against homosexuals, etc.. "Divide and conquer -- then unite and rule.", as Ellsworth Monkton Toohey stated in The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand), outlining collectivist strategy.
Today, it is the patriots, those loyal to America and to the West as a whole, who are the dissenters in many milieus. Try applying for a job as a professor at a major university or as a reporter for the New York Times while wearing an American Flag. If you're a student and you wear our Flag, you'll be lucky if you aren't sent to "sensitivity [servility] training" for daring to offend the feelings of traitors.
Patriotism has nothing whatever to do with "following the government line". Throughout the Clinton administration, I totally dissented from the government's line on gun control. Anybody reading some of my comments last year can see how I felt about President Bush's position on the Federal Anti-Marriage Amendment. Indeed, you can love your country even when it has no government of its own, e.g., the American colonists during our War for Independence, or the Irish and the Poles during their long struggles for independence.
Pstriotism does not mean supporting the government, right or wrong. It means supporting the government of your own country against an enemy government, a totalitarian government, such as we fought in two World Wars, in the Cold War, and in the current War Against the Terror Masters.
"Black people are sub-human scum."
as a form of dissent, is also unpatriotic.
SMA, maryatexitzero: your examples in addition to Dean's suggest that whatever patriotism is, (still very murky in my mind) it is possible for dissent to be unrelated to it, to be patriotic, or to be unpatriotic as the case may be. maryatexitzero's example is particularly problematic, because dissenting with the state department at a time of war could be thought of as weakening the credibility of the state deparatment which in turn might be an important part of the war effort.
I confess I found the flap about Mark Felt deeply divisive, because both opponents and supporters were claiming he was either a traitor or a patriot.
<em>Defending such monsters is a heavy burden and an obligation, NOT an expression of patriotism.</em>
<p>But if a man were to reluctantly take up such a burden and obligation, knowing that it was such, because his country required it of him; would that not make it an act of patriotism?
Defending such monsters is a heavy burden and an obligation, NOT an expression of patriotism.
But if a man were to reluctantly take up such a burden and obligation, knowing that it was such, because his country required it of him; would that not make it an act of patriotism?
Are you saying that criticism of any branch of government, like Congress, during a time of war is unpatriotic? I'm not sure what the laws are like in Canada, but those are not our laws.
According to the declaration of independence, the government should respect the will of the people.
..governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness
The government derives its powers from the consent of the governed.
The United States=the American people.
Patriotism is a form of respect paid to the American people, not to the various bureacracies that make up the government, even in a time of war. When the interests or actions of the American government interfere with the will and the safety of the American people, dissent is necessary and patriotic.
Another way of saying this is that you and Steven both seem to believe in some deeper sense of patriotism that transcends a particular government or bureaucracy, but what is that deeper sense exactly?
As Dean's original post shows, it's possible to devalue a word so badly that it either means nothing or the opposite of what it was supposed to mean. It also seems possible to load it up so much that it means much more than it was supposed to.
"The Constitution is an intolerable burden on our duly elected representatives in Congress, and must be replaced."
The problem with those statements is that they are incorrect and hateful, but without knowing the mind and motivations of the speaker we can't tell wheterh they are patriotic.
Dissent, patriotism, correctness and hatefulness not completely independent variables, but they are close.
How about this formula:
Dissent when my country is wrong. Assent when my country is right. But it is my country, right or wrong.
Too simplistic, of course, since it leaves out this: Quiet dissent when dissent weakens and strong dissent when dissent strengthens.
Yours,
Wince, aka Tom Hawkson
But sometimes, it's also patriotic to headbutt one of these fuckers at BART -- The SF BAy ARea's commuter rail system -- trying to lecture me about how the military is targeting under-privileged kids in high schools for recruitment.
My definition of patriotism is simple and it is the historic definition: love of and loyalty to one's country, to one's nation. Nations in the West have existed long before nation-states (a relatively modern phenomenon). Joan of Arc, Robert Emmet, Nathan Hale, Kosciusco -- were all patriots, super-patriots, loyal to their deaths, to their own nations, to France, to Ireland, to America, to Poland, long before these nations had governments of their own, and these patriots defied to their deaths the foreign (English or Prussian) governments that occupied their countries. Had the Nazis conquered England, Churchill would have continued to his dying breath to be loyal to his beloved England, never to Hitler's Reich. That is what patriotism means. Anything less is not patriotism.
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.
Personally? I consider it unpatriotic to think that positive, pro-American reporting on a war is "taking the government line."
Your central thesis, stated elsewhere, appears to be that holding or expressing an opinion contrary to conventional wisdom or the government line is to commit an act of at least questionable patriotism.
I never said that, I never so much as implied that, and I don't believe it.