One Last Political Post

I know that a lot of my posts have been rather political and slanted to the left lately. It is because I am a liberal, left-leaning guy who is reading a somewhat political book by an even more liberal gal. This will be the last one for a while, I promise, but I just finished the book and really liked the passage from the essay from which the full book gets it's name, The Partly Cloudy Patriot. This passage is in regard to the immediate days after 9/11 when it became the almost mandatory fad to fly the flag in the name of patriotism and people who were critical of the government were looked down upon.

The true American patriot is by definition skeptical of the government. Skepticism of the government was actually one of the platforms the current figurehead of the government ran on. How many times in the campaign did President Bush proclaim of his opponent, the then vice president, "He trusts the federal government and I trust the people"? This deep suspicion of Washington is one the most American emotions an American can have.

I am by no means a hellraising, anti-government, revolutionary, or conspiracy theorist, but I certainly have some things to say when I'm not in total agreement with the government. This passage made me feel justified in not only my own suspicion, but of my empathy for those who get raked across the coals because they want to make the U.S. a better place, not because of hatred for the land that bore us.