PATRIOTISM AND PROTEST

As a willful, motivated and positive member of the antiwar protest movement that is currently picking up steam in America and around the world (just you watch this weekend), I do recognize that there is a split on one signifcant concept: patriotism.

In fact, there is a split within myself, even. Patriotism as a concept is something I don't particularly like (and no, I don't hate America, in fact I love it so much that I want to fix it and make it less selfish), and I am particularly averse to wrapping myself in any national flag, let alone this nation's. I mourned along with the rest of the world when 3,000 people suddenly lost their lives a year and a half ago yesterday, but ultimately my tendencies are personal and not national (I got tired of and sickened by the flag-waving real fast, for example). I shy away from forms of patriotism and jingoism that render individual American lives more important than those of other nations, and I hate when I read a headline like "Explosion in Thailand kills one American, 23 others". BUT as someone who doesn't want to see blood needlessly spilled, whether it is that of Iraqis or our own soldiers, I think that peace, and the well-being of people everywhere, is a patriotic value. It is not a philosophical contortion by any means to say I love my country and that I want to preserve the health of my fellow citizens.

It also happens that the peace=patriotism idea is one that middle America just might vibe to. And according to this piece from the Sac Bee, the peace movement is seeing this as well:

"Hell No, We Won't Go!" has morphed into "Peace is Patriotic" in the modern anti-war lexicon, as peace strategists urge their followers to embrace the flag rather than burn it.

Aware that screaming denunciations of the United States might alienate mainstream Americans, some leaders of the peace movement are borrowing a tool from the right and using patriotism to sell peace.

"It's an epiphany the left has experienced," said Susan C. Strong, an activist and researcher who studies language. "People realized: 'Oh yes -- we're Americans, too.' Our frustration has been the degree to which our government wasn't living up to the values -- the American values -- we hold."

Strong, a former teacher of rhetoric and argumentation in Berkeley, has a Web site she calls the Metaphor Project. On it, she's collected a raft of catch phrases and clichÈs for peace advocates to weave into their conversations with Middle America.

"I began to realize that a key problem we had was that the language we were using was very remote from the mainstream way of talking and understanding things," she said.

Some samples from her metaphor buffet: "the cradle of liberty," "the wild frontier," "rags to riches," "common sense," "justice for all," "the little guy," "Joe Six Pack," "a beacon of freedom" -- even "dance with the one that brung ya."

She cited a sample slogan. "Win without War. It fits another American core value: We like to win!"

Hehehe, very clever.

Oh and yes, the exercising of the right to disagree with the government is also a patriotic act in my opinion.