Will Misguided Patriotism Destroy Free Speech?
http://www.lewrockwell.com/whitehead/whitehead14.1.html
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The right wing’s perversion of patriotism
Christian Science Monitor
by Walter Rodgers
It once was a given that you did not discuss religion or politics in polite company. To this list, I would add ‘patriotism.’ It has become the new secular American religion, so mercurial that we cannot even agree about what it is. It is regrettable that a once healthy American patriotism has morphed into intolerant jingoism. Love of country has been hijacked. It was not always thus. As a boy in New England, just after World War II, I was schooled in patriotism quite unlike what’s out there today. The week before Thanksgiving, public schools taught us the Pilgrims’ vision of religious liberty. On Memorial Day, Cub Scouts marched up to Pine Hill Cemetery and laid flowers on the graves of Civil War veterans, who we learned had fought and died to preserve the Union. In Massachusetts, patriotism had special currency because it earned us an extra holiday that schoolchildren in most other states didn’t have, Patriots’ Day...
http://tinyurl.com/24odbvd
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
http://sharenews.twoday.net/search?q=patriotism
http://sharenews.twoday.net/search?q=/whitehead
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Walter+Rodgers
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The right wing’s perversion of patriotism
Christian Science Monitor
by Walter Rodgers
It once was a given that you did not discuss religion or politics in polite company. To this list, I would add ‘patriotism.’ It has become the new secular American religion, so mercurial that we cannot even agree about what it is. It is regrettable that a once healthy American patriotism has morphed into intolerant jingoism. Love of country has been hijacked. It was not always thus. As a boy in New England, just after World War II, I was schooled in patriotism quite unlike what’s out there today. The week before Thanksgiving, public schools taught us the Pilgrims’ vision of religious liberty. On Memorial Day, Cub Scouts marched up to Pine Hill Cemetery and laid flowers on the graves of Civil War veterans, who we learned had fought and died to preserve the Union. In Massachusetts, patriotism had special currency because it earned us an extra holiday that schoolchildren in most other states didn’t have, Patriots’ Day...
http://tinyurl.com/24odbvd
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
http://sharenews.twoday.net/search?q=patriotism
http://sharenews.twoday.net/search?q=/whitehead
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Walter+Rodgers
rudkla - 20. Jul, 05:54
