A BRIEF ASIDE

I see from the tenor of comments discussions and from some of the folks who've recently linked the JYB that my most recent posts have upset more than a few people.

Good.

It's all about priorities. Is it more important to you that we win the war or that a certain political either retain or recapture political power? Or does the question make no sense to you, because for one reason or another you reject the premise that either we're at war or that we should be? A patriot will answer one way, some who is less patriotic will answer another way. The answer is telling, and it's not difficult to see how people will answer the question.

One way is to simply ask the question, but you're likely to get a politically correct answer if you just ask in a straightforward way (which is one reason I don't trust polls too much--I was once goaded by a pollster who didn't like the way I answered any of his questions, and he tried to guide me to the "right" answers. I suspect this goes on quite a bit). Another way is just to read what someone writes, either in comments or on their own blogs, since everyone has a blog nowadays. If they spend more time proactively chronicling the war from the point of view of stopping terrorism or examining security or the like, chances are they are objectively interested in keeping the nation secure. That's a patriot. If they spend more time proactively criticizing a majority of the steps the country has taken to win the war, they're either not satisfied that the war is being led in a serious way, or they're interested in scoring political points, or they simply don't believe in either the war or the nation's right to defend itself. Or they're engaged in some sort of conspiracy theory and have set out to prove it. I would say that of the latter groups, the first person is likely a patriot--they want to win the war, but aren't satisfied that it's being waged seriously or in a way that will lead to victory. I find myself in that category quite a bit. The others--I'd say their love of country is open to question. If their politics are more important to them than the overall chance of victory in the war, they're obectively less than a full patriot, and the scale slides downward as the descriptions progress. The last is a loon, a group that seems to be growing both in numbers and influence by the day. One exception would be a full pacifist, who has a cause and wants the rest of us to buy into it. Such a person can be a patriot, or not--it depends on his reasoning and in which direction he casts the majority of his ire and support.

I've been writing these posts to try and get some people to think, as well as simply to lay out what I think are legitimate questions regarding that newly minted third rail of American politics, the question of patriotism. Think hard about whom you criticize, and why you criticize them. What's your motivation? Are you doing the nation good or harm, or neither? American politics once famously ended at the water's edge; foreign policy, matters of war and peace and enemies and friends, were once largely matters of consensus. Vietnam shredded that ideal, permanently it seems. We're now in a war that started, for most of us, when terrorists killed thousands on a cloudless day on our own soil. For most of us, the need to defend ourselves has remained obvious ever since. For some, things are less clear. I hope in making some people mad I've clarified a thing or two, or at least given them someone new to hate.