Just what exactly is a "Patriot"?
by Col. William Flatt
To some people, including liberals, being a patriot means waving a flag, paying your taxes, doing what you are told, and conforming to society (following the herd). However, there is something basically wrong with society today, changes occurring in the USA that are in fact 'very scary', especially since 9/11/2001. There are things about our society, our government, and the world that has become very anti-freedom.
Our Constitution stands for freedom, and Teddy Roosevelt defined patriotism well when he said 'Patriotism is standing by the country' (the Constitution). We should only support those leaders who support the constitution, and support them only to the degree to which they support the Constitution! It is the law of the land. Don't believe the media prostitutes or the politicians when they refer to our nation as a "democracy"... NO, NO, NO!! It's a CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC. See Old Ben's quote below about democracy.
Since 9/11, we are told that the US Government has created a parallel legal system for all the political enemies of the state that they label as "terrorists". However, who gets to decide who gets labeled as a terrorist and who gets to be labeled as a patriot? Or vice-versa? What guarantee do we have that this power is not going to be abused, especially considering that the horribly misnamed "USA PATRIOT Act" is so poorly written that even a jaywalker could be declared to be a terrorist? And where exactly does that leave our uniquely American tradition of politically incorrect dissent, and the people who exercise that Right? Place your bets now, people...
Also, what about our government's demands to create a national ID card, establish a network of concentration camps across the interior of the nation, their sanction for the use of TORTURE to extract confessions from whomever they deem necessary, their creation of a Big-Brother domestic surveillance agency (Office of Total Information Awareness), and let's not forget their refusal to secure our borders or arm airline pilots.
Amerika uber alles! Papers please!!
One of my biggest pet peeves is gun control. The Nazis would not have been able to commit genocide and kill over 6 million Jews if those Jews had been armed. But they (and most other Germans) had a strong mentality of obedience, and abiding by the law (no matter how wrong the law is). As a result, by the time Hitler came to power there was no one to stop him. What does that have to do with today?? Today federal gun laws mirror the Nazi gun laws from almost 75 years ago. Think about that - - US law is emulating Nazi law!!! Background information at http://www.jpfo.org
I knew an old German fellow named Hans, my dad had made friends with him some years ago when I was a kid. He was talking about how the USA was becoming more and more like Nazi Germany - and he was a concentration camp survivor! He explained (and this was in the 1970's - over 25 years ago) what he was seeing in the USA that made him think this was so. It changed my dad's way of thinking, rather drastically, since my dad was a cop!! Of course, being an impressionable child, I always remembered what Hans had said. After all, he lived through it once, had lost his first wife to the Nazis. His wife since then was also a survivor of the same concentration camp (Dachau, I think).
As I got older, I became involved in the modern patriot movement, and realized the full extent of what the old man, Hans, was talking about. I realized that this country had in fact been on a slide towards tyranny for several decades, possibly starting back in 1933. That's when FDR (our first socialist president) and Congress passed the Banking Emergency Act of 1933 (in March of that year). It included an unconstitutional provision that made use of key language of the 1917 "Trading With the Enemy Act" that made the American people themselves the "enemy" of the government!
What's the patriot movement? It is the civil rights movement of the 21st Century. People of all walk of life, Black, white, American Indian, Hispanic, old and young, from all walks of life are patriots. Patriots belong to diverse political affiliations: Libertarian, Constitutionalist, Republican, etc... Patriots also get involved in their communities; church and youth programs, civic organizations, and so forth... It is all done in the name of freedom! But freedom has its price. That price is ETERNAL VIGILANCE and the willingness to DEFEND it against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
I love my country, I really and truly do. I love it because we have something no one else in the world has. "Freedom is the state of exemption from the power or control of another." (Noah Webster 1828)
Americans should be at least a little scared. The people who have hijacked our Liberty are now running the show! Worse yet, they control the electoral process, so we can't get them out. So people then need to move beyond scared and GET ANGRY. This should motivate people to say, "enough is enough!" and "No!" to this New World Order (Their term, not mine). I am also saying that people should not live in fear. I believe people are created in the image of God, and didn't Christ tell his apostles on many occasions, "Fear not, for I am with you"?? If we have faith, there is no need for fear.
The problem is, most people have been too inert to give a damn. You have to shake them, rock them, rattle them out of their mass-media induced stupor! Too many Americans come home from work to glue their snouts to the "boob tube" TV, rather than assume their responsibilities as citizens in their communities, their state, and the nation. Christ said, "I wish thou were either hot or cold, but because thou are lukewarm, I shall spew thee out.."
We need to be motivated (hot) or uncomfortable (cold), but never - NEVER - complacent. Complacency KILLS. Just ask any one of those 6 million Jews (oops, that won't work, they're all dead)...
Get it??
You see, the reason why I am like this is because I suffer from an affliction that comes from having come too close to the Liberty Bell. Unlike most kids nowadays, I was raised with solid Christian-American values. I was 7 years old in 1976, so I was raised on a diet of patriotism (both the liberal, touchy-feely inconsequential kind and well as the more meaningful kind of patriotism of our Founding Fathers).
I've grown up, lived and believed in the kind of nation that George Washington & our founding fathers WANTED this country to be! When one compares that to what this nation is now, I judge it and find it lacking!
My question to you is, what will you do for freedom?
I'll close this with a few quotes:
"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well- armed lamb contesting the vote." - Benjamin Franklin, 1759
"The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedients, and by parts ... the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke
"The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil constitution, are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors; they purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men."
- Samuel Adams
"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."
- Samuel Adams, speech at the Philadelphia State House, August 1, 1776
