“While some think dissent is unpatriotic, I argue that dissent is the highest form of patriotism."

[Fire Walk With Me]

― Howard Zinn “While some people think that dissent is unpatriotic, I would argue that dissent is the highest form of patriotism."

In fact, if patriotism means being true to the principles for which your country is supposed to stand, then certainly the right to dissent is one of those principles. And if we're exercising that right to dissent, it's a patriotic act.

One of the great mistakes made in discussing patriotism -- a very common mistake -- is to think that patriotism means support for your government. And that view of patriotism ignores the founding principles of the country expressed in the Declaration of Independence. That is: the Declaration of Independence makes it clear that governments are artificial creations set up to achieve certain ends -- equality, life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness -- and when governments become destructive of those ends it is the right of the people in the words of the Declaration, to alter or abolish the government.

In other words, obedience to government certainly is not a form of patriotism. Governments are the instruments to achieve certain ends. And if the government goes against those ends, if the government is not defending our liberties, but is
diminishing our liberties, if the government is sending young people into war or making war which is unjustified, well then the government is not following the principles of caring about life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.

When the government is taking huge sums of money from education and health, and using that money for military purposes, that's a violation of the principles of the Declaration of Independence. And a government like that cannot be obeyed. To obey a government like that is not being patriotic. At that point, when a government behaves like that, it is the most patriotic thing to disobey the government.” ― Howard Zinn, historian

Howard Zinn (August 24, 1922 – January 27, 2010)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Zinn

[ProgressiveProfessor]

2. The Tea Baggers are certainly dissenting from this administration's actions and intent

are we going to start calling them high end patriots now?

[antiquie]

3. Are you saying dissent is unpatriotic

or that because they do it, we shouldn't?

[ProgressiveProfessor]

5. No, I think it is much more subtle than the OP sound bite approach

[Fire Walk With Me]

7. Please see my unsubtle reply, Post #4. n/t

[Fire Walk With Me]

4. They are actually supporting this administration's back-door actions.

The "tea party" are funded by the Koch brothers, who want to control politics as it gets in the way of their profit engine. "tea party" people are unknowingly calling for legislation designed to benefit the Kochs and other Plutonomists.

Conditions which benefit Plutocracy: Right-wing, anti-immigration political parties which support the rise in profit share/fall in wage share

Corporate Profits Have Grown By 171 Percent Under Obama -- Highest Rate Since 1900
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/corporate-profits-have-grown-171-percent-under-obama-highest-rate-1900
"Average annual corporate profit growth under Obama is the highest since 1900, whereas profit growth declined during both Bush presidencies. As a share of the economy, corporate profits have never been higher.
Unfortunately, this profit deluge has not been shared by workers, whose wages as a percentage of the economy have fallen to all-time lows. Workers also got dinged by the recent increase in the payroll tax, which was large enough to wipe out a minimum wage increase in some states."


8 Huge Corporate Handouts in the Fiscal Cliff Bill
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/8-huge-corporate-handouts-fiscal-cliff-bill

"Throughout the months of November and December, a steady stream of corporate CEOs flowed in and out of the White House to discuss the impending fiscal cliff. Many of them, such as Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs, would then publicly come out and talk about how modest increases of tax rates on the wealthy were reasonable in order to deal with the deficit problem. What wasn’t mentioned is what these leaders wanted, which is what’s known as “tax extenders”, or roughly $205B of tax breaks for corporations. With such a banal name, and boring and difficult to read line items in the bill, few political operatives have bothered to pay attention to this part of the bill. But it is critical to understanding what is going on.

5) Subsidies for Goldman Sachs Headquarters – Sec. 328 extends 'tax exempt financing for York Liberty Zone,' which was a program to provide post-9/11 recovery funds. Rather than going to small businesses affected, however, this was, according to Bloomberg, 'little more than a subsidy for fancy Manhattan apartments and office towers for Goldman Sachs and Bank of America Corp.' Michael Bloomberg himself actually thought the program was excessive, so that’s saying something. According to David Cay Johnston’s The Fine Print, Goldman got $1.6 billion in tax free financing for its new massive headquarters through Liberty Bonds."


Don’t Blink, or You’ll Miss Another Bailout

http://www.cnbc.com/id/100466032

In an interview, Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio, who serves on the Banking Committee, said the New York Fed's behavior in this case "underscores that the more we learn about these bailouts, gifts and advantages that Wall Street gets, the clearer it becomes that one set of rules applies to the largest megabanks and another set of rules to the smaller financial institutions and the rest of the country."


America faces more than a dozen deadlines, all caused by billionaires and wealth transfer

"I’ve had an article in draft for some time — 'The 16 Deadlines Facing America' — that details each deadline, describes the dangers, and states why each faces an end-point rather than just a periodic fluctuation... I’ve identified 16 of these game-over situations facing America today, situations from which there is the possibility of no recovery — not the certainty, but the possibility. As I was working on that article though, looking especially what it would take to reverse each trend, I realized it’s really only one story writ 16 times on 16 separate canvasses.

That story? The song of the predator class, the rich and the rest — 'All your money are belong to us.'
Here they are, numbered in no particular order, but grouped:

1. Accelerating transfer of wealth to the .001% (“the billionaires”)
2. Accelerating transfer of manufacturing out of the country
3. Marginalization or destruction of effective labor unions
4. Destruction of the middle class (i.e., the consumer class)
5. Capture of government by billionaires of both parties
6. Capture of the Republican Party by anti-Constitutional billionaires via Tea Party-financed candidates
7. Constitutional changes, including changes in practice to rule of law and an ever-widening circle of elites with immunity from prosecution
8. Creation via trade agreements of a transnational state that enshrines corporate sovereignty
9. Permanent war and a permanently expanding military
10. Permanently expanding national security state, including militarization of police, widespread spying and punishment for political crimes
11. The ticking time bomb of increasing numbers of returning untreated war-damaged battle-trained veterans
12. Oil dependence without recognition of oil as a soon-to-be-depleted energy source
13. Deterioration of the environment, largely due to oil and carbon dependence, among other causes
14. Destruction of the integrity of our food supply
15. Destruction of public education
16. Climate catastrophe and the collapse of human populations and level of civilization

My bottom line, and the surprise discovery, is that every single one is driven by one common cause — internationalist billionaires."

http://americablog.com/2013/02/america-faces-more-than-a-dozen-deadlines-all-caused-by-billionaires-and-wealth-transfer.html


Koch Brothers Driving Keystone XL Pipeline from Canada to Cut Out Venezuelan Oil
Greg Palast

Koch brothers could save two billion dollars a year if they can replace Venezuelan heavy crude crude with Canadian tar sands - one of the dirtiest sources of carbon emissions on the planet.

Koch brothers pour more cash into think tanks, ALEC

http://www.publicintegrity.org/2013/01/31/12105/exclusive-koch-brothers-pour-more-riches-think-tanks-alec?utm_source=iwatchnews&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=rss


Meet the Contractors Turning America's Police Into a Paramilitary Force

The national security state has an annual budget of around $1 trillion. Of that huge pile of money, large amounts go to private companies the federal government awards contracts to. Some, like Lockheed Martin or Boeing, are household names, but many of the contractors fly just under the public's radar. What follows are three companies you should know about (because some of them can learn a lot about you with their spy technologies).

http://www.alternet.org/meet-contractors-turning-americas-police-paramilitary-force?paging=off


Plenty of rich people are becoming ever more rich and the "tea party" are some of those duped into lobbying politics into helping them. The "tea party" are as far from being "patriots" as are the Koch brothers who fund them.

[tavalon]

8. I don't have to agree with patriots to recognize their patriotism

I know the teabaggers are poorly informed but their intent is dissent to the government and in that, they are exercising their patriotic duty, would that it were more educated.

[indepat]

6. Agree with Howard and am intent upon expressing approbation when those in national office violate

any principle elucidated by the master of Zinn. Any implementation of a right-wing agenda is an assault upon equality, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for the 99%. :patriotic:

[limpyhobbler]

9. a quote for a quote

The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naïve and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair.

- H. L. Mencken