Patriotism?

[Ingram]

It's 21:21 PST. And at this moment, I'm proud of our country.

I have been ashamed at the gullibility and apathy of our nation in the course of my lifetime, but at this particular moment...I'm extremely proud.


For those of you who would suggest I'm less than a patriot for saying other than nationalistic self congratulatory platitudes, I suggest you review our long term and relatively recent national history.

We must forge a new day now

[Rin]

Well done, you guys! I don't live in the US, but may I say how pleased and relieved we in Japan are, regarding the outcome. Actually, I think it's safe to say that I speak for an awful lot of people in the world right now, not just Japan!

What an extraordinary moment in history. One day I'll tell my grandkids about this ... hope I remember where I've left my teeth.

[Doug]

And at this moment, I'm proud of our country.
I have been ashamed at the gullibility and apathy of our nation in the course of my lifetime, but at this particular moment...I'm extremely proud.

For those of you who would suggest I'm less than a patriot for saying other than nationalistic self congratulatory platitudes, I suggest you review our long term and relatively recent national history.

We must forge a new day now

I agree Ingram, I'm proud too -- forging on and differently, wouldn't you say? Isn't there a saying, "History teaches us that we don't learn from history!"

Glad to hear that Rin!!!!

I think with more of us knowing that we are more powerful, psychically or mentally in a way and are responsible for our reality and it's not the will of something else, the changes will benefit us greatly. Power to the people, get your thinking caps on!!! Gotta throw that Love thing in there too


Doug

[Redmeanie]

Im Very HAppy!!

I am a USMC Veteran, Disabled Due to Conflict.....I have been in all 3 of the most recent conflicts that the US has been in.
I was encouraged to believe during those times that the Republicans had Americans best interests at heart and sacrificed my Health to that belief. As I have sat many, many days in the Veterans Hospitals talking to Veterans of Past Conflicts and those coming back now, minus limbs, scared, both physically and most of all Mentally, my views have changed drastically over the last 3 years.

I have come to the realization that the Republican Politicians only care about 1 thing and 1 thing only, Money! I watched in horror the way we treated POW's and then get so upset when they would kill or guys when they were captured. I watched a Man who's whole political career is based off the fact that he was a POW in Vietnam condemn others use of torture while approving our use of it. I almost choked when I sat and read the Patriot Act.....This was nothing more that approval of a Dictatorship and was almost verbatem the same as the "Act" used by Hitler to seize total control over Germany in WWII.

I had already picked a Country to move to if Bush part 3 would have won. But Thank GOD that I was not alone in seeing that the US was on a downward spiral and a drastic change had to be made.

I just hope the World will forgive us for what our country has done....And maybe they will see that when the American "People" had a chance to make a Change we Did!

[jibbguy]

Spirituality vs Instinct

I believe there can now be some good news and hope in the world. That more and more people are going to start thinking about our world, our entire species, as our "clan", our "tribe", and our "genetic line"... Our self-centric group that must be instinctively protected and promoted above all others.

...Rather then our country, our region, our race or creed, our political party... This, imo, will be the key to our finally "growing up" and putting away war and violence forever.

Some say that we are really only clever animals, still governed mainly by instinct. "Reason" is what we use for resolution when our instincts conflict each other. I somewhat believe this, and there are many examples of how instinct governs nearly every aspect our lives... How it can so often be found lurking behind the facade of what we call "culture". Lol, it is also a good explanation of why men and women often have such different definitions / expressions of logic and reason

Yet Spirituality would appear to not be a part of that mix at all; it is something different and unique to sentient individuals... And when you think about it, perhaps possessing the potential for spirituality is actually the definition of being "sentient"... Dunno.

However it could be that spirituality is also instinct; that "weaker force" for protection and promotion of the entire species, verses the urge for furthermost of our individual blood line (...clan, tribe, race/creed, political party, etc). If this is true, it sure doesn't feel like it to me. And it is pretty hard to spin the concept of "Art", one of the most powerful expressions of spirituality imo, as mere "instinct"

But nevertheless, the result of this "growing-up" is that Patriotism may eventually gain a new meaning: To be a partisan and proponent for greater Humankind; for the fostering of our environment, for the ending of war and hunger, for the education of all, for the end of poverty and ignorance. And the new Patriots of Humankind will work together with their sisters and brothers all over the planet for promoting these goals.

Question: Terms such as "Patriotism" always have an antithesis. If this new universal Humankind-centric patriotism eventually takes hold, what would then constitute being a "Traitor"?

[Redmeanie]

Jibbguy Asked "Question: Terms such as "Patriotism" always have an antithesis. If this new universal Humankind-centric patriotism eventually takes hold, what would then constitute being a "Traitor"?"

Hopefully it will just become a word that no longer will have any meaning! Or at least will fall by the wayside do to a lack of reason to use it.

Like many other words, it would depend on your perspective.

Terrorist - Freedom Fighter
Revolutionary - Activist

You see where Im going..... Words like these are used by the powers that be to put fear in the hearts of the people. When in reality the powers that be are the only common denominator in either version....

[Aaron]

who are patriots?

Here is the famous FEMA video of an instructor teaching that the Founding Fathers are terrorists:

YouTube - FEMA calls Founding Fathers THE 1st TERRORIST ORGANIZATION IN THE U.S.A !

When I first saw it several years back, I thought it is possible that this video was orchestrated, but a buddy of mine, a drill sergeant in the Army, who had been in Iraq a few times himself, was told the exact same thing!

There are copies of brochures, which I can't find now, but it was distributed to various 3-letter organizations, etc... and gave a long list of people to watch out for as being potential enemy combatants...

It included anyone carrying a copy of the U.S. Constitution, Christians, ANYONE asserting their rights, and just about anyone else that doesn't bow down to the government as their master.

[future pather]

RedMeanie,

I agree that many recent and some past republicans are as you say. However there are good hearted republicans too. I've tried hard to remember that these past years.


In general,

I have to wonder if the PATHS project1world module has helped in the election. Since it's topic is peace, it's easy to tell which candidate it would have favored.



Jessica

[Aaron]

real republicans

I agree Jessica. All of my close republican friends are some of the finest people I know. Of course I could say the same for my democratic and independent friends. I'm fortunate to have good people in my life.

But the point is, they are real republicans. Some of them voted for Obama to prevent their own party from getting pulled down that dark road any further.

The Bush admin was faaaaaaarr from being republican.
"fascism - A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism."

American Heritage Dictionary, 1983

And the whole concepts of parties or FACTIONS -
Avalon Project - Washington's Farewell Address 1796
Washington's Farewell Address 1796

You can see the whole speech at the above link, below summarizes it well.

-------------------------------

There were two notable themes from the speech.

The first theme warned about what Washington saw as a potentially harmful political factionalism in the country. He urged Americans to unite for the good of the whole country. Two political factions had developed into political parties in the early 1790s: the Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans (later known as the Republicans, not to be confused with the Republican Party founded 1854). The Federalists, and Washington himself, backed Hamilton's plan for a central bank and other strong central economic plans based on manufacturing. The Democratic-Republicans opposed the strong government inherent in the Hamiltonian plan and favored farmers as opposed to city people. Washington foresaw that this political polarization would play significantly in the new government, as these two emerging parties attempted to guide the nation and shape it to correspond with their thought.

The second theme was a warning to the nation to avoid permanent foreign alliances, particularly in Europe. Both parties wanted to stay out of the wars between France and Britain. The Federalists favored stronger ties with the British, while the Republicans insisted on adhering to the Treaty of Alliance the U.S. had already signed with France in 1778.
-------------------------------

George Washington and the other Founding Father's Wisdom just seem to be so timeless.

Obama was a Constitutional Law Professor
FactCheck.org: Was Barack Obama really a constitutional law professor?
He was an "instructor" yes but the school sides with Obama and does admit he was a Professor.

"at a March 30, 2007, fundraiser when he said, "I was a constitutional law professor, which means unlike the current president I actually respect the Constitution."

Let's hope that he demonstrates how much he respects the constitution.

Any man with truth in his heart is fit to be President in my opinion and could just as easily have been a republican. I think we're on a good move towards change.

Ultimately, it would shake the ground we walk on to have high level discussions of the illegal non-ratified 14th amendment that turned people from state citizens into subjects of the federal govt.

IF and WHEN that becomes the priority conversation for most American's, as important to them as the economy, health care or education, and if we actually go back to the real Constitution, on THAT day, this country will be a Beacon of Light for the whole world.

[Redmeanie]

RedMeanie,

I agree that many recent and some past republicans are as you say. However there are good hearted republicans too. I've tried hard to remember that these past years.


In general,

I have to wonder if the PATHS project1world module has helped in the election. Since it's topic is peace, it's easy to tell which candidate it would have favored.



Jessica

I agree.....I said the Republican Politicians.....Not Republicans I have many, many friends that are Republicans, but like Aaron said, "Real" Republicans....And many of the voted for Obama, and the ones that just couldn't vote Democrat chose not to vote at all and stay out of it.....

As a matter of Fact I consider myself a Republican if we go by the original meaning, and not what it has spawned into nowadays....

[zartgirl]

Just something to think about..

I just wanted to post this somewhere, and this seemed like as good of a place as any...

My X husband was very involved in local politics, so I had a very close look at the whole thing... Probably why I managed to forget to register to Vote in the state of Washington this year. It is enough to turn anyone dis infranchised! The fact was that in the little City we lived in in Oregon... nothing could get done for real. I would get frustrated and say something like "Why don't you just change it?" He would saywe are working on it, but there is a lot of red tape... Do you know in the 6 to 8 years he has been elected I don't think they accomplished much more than renaming a fire station after one of the City Councilman that had served for like 60 years and was a fire chief and other stuff.

So that was in this small little town, so what is it like on a national level? I can tell you that it would not matter who got elected last night unless his name was GOD...(Our National Government has taken on a life of its own, and it has nothing to do with the beliefs of those who are elected any more) Nothing could change with out a lot of LOVE being sent to him. That man will be powerless unless we as a group here and can gather others too also start sending that man massive amounts of LOVE! Not to mention the whole Government! Congress, and on and on and on...

Okay for those of you that are wondering what I am talking about as far as sending love, you can go to the Living on LOVE thread in the Personal development forum, and there you will find some powerful books to read! I can say personally that some very interesting changes are starting to take place in my life since reading them...

Now I intend to start sending the person you all sent to the White House tons of LOVE everyday. (I say you all, because I forgot to send in my registration form so I could not vote)

Just my thoughts... Sallyjane

[Pamela]

"Yes We Did"

My Friends...

When I witnessed the results of the election on Tuesday night and shared in the emotion of the thousands of people who turned out to watch the speech by President-Elect Obama, I can honestly say that I haven't felt such a deep sense of hope for our country in many, many years... I still vividly remember sitting in my sixth-grade classroom when my school's vice-principal came with tears streaming down his face, and in a choking voice, to tell us that President Kennedy had been shot... So began my life-long disconcertion with the injustices bestowed upon the American people by our own government. This came in my email today and I thought it appropriate to share it here...And Sallyjane is right...We all MUST send this man Love...


YES WE DID

By Marianne Williamson

America has had a non-violent revolution.


As long as there are historians writing about the United States, this moment of fundamental re-alignment of our national purpose will be remembered, pored over and analyzed. It will be seen as one of the shining points along the evolutionary arc of the American story. Yet it will never submit itself to being summed up in a nice little package that reason alone can understand.


It's been noted before that Americans get excited about politics every forty years. Then, in the words of comedian Will Rogers, "We have to go sleep it off."


We were certainly excited in the l960's. And this is 2008; exactly forty years since the most dramatic and violent year of the Sixties decade: the year when both Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. were literally killed before our eyes.


At that point, a generation of young people -- looking much like the youthful army so out in full force today, only grungier -- marched in the streets to repudiate an oppressive system and to try to stop an unjust war. And then bullets stopped us. The shots that killed the Kennedy's and King carried a loud, unspoken message for all of us: that we were to go home now, that we were to do whatever we wanted within the private sector, yet leave the public sector to whomever wanted it so much that they were willing to kill for it. And for all intents and purposes, we did as we were told.


According to ancient Asian philosophers, history moves not in a circle but in a spiral. Whether as an individual or as a nation, whatever lessons we were presented once and failed to learn will come back again but in a different form. For the generation of the Sixties and for our children, the lessons of that time -- as well as its hopes and dreams and idealism -- came back in 2008.


During our forty years in the desert, we learned many things. Then, we marched in the streets; this time, we marched to the polls. Then, we shouted, "Hell no, we won't go!" This time, we shouted, "Yes, we can." Then, we were so angry that our anger consumed us. This time, we made a more compassionate humanity the means by which we sought our goal as well as the goal itself.


In the words of Gloria Steinem, "I feel like our future has come back." And indeed it has. For in the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., "No lie can last forever." What Bobby Kennedy tried to do, and was killed for trying; what Martin Luther King tried to do, and was killed for trying; what the students at Kent state were trying to protest, and were killed for daring to; Barack Obama and his army of millions of idealists with the audacity to hope have now succeeded at doing.


Praise God. Praise God.


And that praise to God didn't just go out last night, when Obama's election to the Presidency was finally achieved. That praise was part of what allowed the waters to part here in the first place. Millions of Americans have been deeply aware that this kind of historic and fundamentally positive effort has not gone well in the recent past, and the spiritual understanding of this generation of Americans -- an understanding not yet fully formed forty years ago -- created an invisible light around the Obama campaign. How many people over the last twenty-one months have posted, in their own way, angels to Obama's left and angels to his right, angels in front of him and angels behind him, angels above him and angels below him? I know I have, and so has everyone I know. Hopefully we will continue to do so.


The Obama phenomenon did not come out of nowhere. It emerged as much from our story as from his -- as much from our yearning for meaning as from his ambition to be President; as much from our determination to achieve collective redemption as from his determination to achieve an individual accomplishment. And those who fail to recognize the invisible powers at work here -- who see the external drama of politics yet fail to discern the profound forces that moved mountains by moving the American heart -- well, they're just like Bob Dylan's Thin Man to whom he sang, "You don't know what's going on here, do you, Mr. Jones?"


Back then, Mr. Jones didn't know what was going on, but many of us did. We knew what was going on then and we knew what needed to happen; we simply weren't mature enough and we were too wounded then, as people and as a culture, to pull it off.


This time, we both knew and we did. We knew who we had to become and we knew what we had to do. The violent American revolution of 1776 entailed separating from another country. The non-violent revolution of 2008 -- a non-violent revolution that did not quite fail, yet also did not quite succeed in the l960's -- has entailed separating from who we used to be.


In the l960's, we wanted peace but we ourselves were angry. This time, after hearing Gandhi's call that we must be the change we want to see happen in the world, we came to our political efforts with an understanding that we must cast violence from our hearts and minds if we are to cast it from our world; that we must try to love our enemies as well as our friends; and that when a genius of world-historic proportions emerges among us, we cannot and we must not fail to do everything humanly and spiritually possible to support him. For his sake…and for ours.


Having gone to a higher place within ourselves, a higher level of leadership began to emerge among us. A higher level of leader now having emerged among us, he calls us to an even higher place within ourselves. And from this spiraling dance, these two forces together can and will, as Obama has told us, truly change the world. Having moved one mountain, we will now go about the work of removing the ones that remain.


With God's help, yes we can. Yes we did. And yes we will.

--- by Marianne Williamson,
author of Healing the Soul of America

[ANTIQUER]

Military service

Hi Lee.

I am a USMC Veteran, Disabled Due to Conflict.....I have been in all 3 of the most recent conflicts that the US has been in.

With immense gratitude for your military service and sacrifice for our country

Semper Fidelis!!

Al