lazur said:
I do believe that as an American, it's our duty and obligation to stand behind our President against the rest of the world, even if we don't agree with what he or she is doing at the time.
Loyalty and patriotism to your country does not have to equal blind loyalty to our government. As a matter in fact, blind loyalty and obligation to the government is exactly the opposite to what the founding fathers wanted.
The founding fathers, created this country out of dissent to the British Crown and Parliament. The Declaration of Independence, the document which was signed on July 4, 1776, a day which we celebrate every year for our freedoms and independence from Great Britian, was a long list of dissent towards the British. Were they obligated, was it their duty, to be blindly loyal to the British Crown? HELL NO! If they were just like how you want us to be, even if they didn't agree with the laws of the Crown, the United States would still be 13 small colonies of Great Britian on the eastern coast of North America.
Let's say hypothetically that President Bob Sears wanted to become a dictator and rule with an iron fist. Or say that he wanted to eliminate an entire group of people, gays, whites, Hindus, whatever. Do we as Americans have to be blindly loyal to him out of duty and obligation? HELL NO! We would rise up against him and overthrow him.
That was the intent of the founding fathers, the ideas of John Locke, that the government has a contract with the people to protect their rights and in return to let them rule over us, and when government breaks that contract, we as a people have the right to overthrow the government. That is a reason why the government allowed the Bill of Rights include the Second Amendment, the right to bear arms. So that we could arm ourselves and get rid of the tyranical government just like they did.
Democracy was created to give us a voice in the government. To express our support
and dissent at it.
I am a patriot. I love my country. I wouldn't want to live anywhere else in the world. I think that the United States of America is the best country in the world (just like some Canadians think that Canada is the best and some Ugandans think the same about Uganda and so forth). But patriotism and loyalty to my country do not mean 100% blind loyalty to the government and its leaders.
President Thomas Jefferson said:
Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.
President James Madison said:
A President is impeachable if he attempts to subvert the Constitution.
President Theodore Roosevelt said:
Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the President.
President Theodore Roosevelt said:
The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly as necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else.
Thomas Paine said:
It's the duty of the patriot to protect his country from the government.
Reverend Martin Luthor King Jr. said:
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
Think about what I have said and what these wise men have said.
