Real Patriots Speak Their Minds

By Barbara Ehrenreich

Patriotism should bring us together but not so close that we begin to look like sheep. One could detect the bleatings of the herd in a recent televised exchange between columnist Robert Novak and Congressman Joe Kennedy. Frustrated by the Congressman's failure to agree with him on a range of issues, Novak suddenly snapped, "Where's your American-flag lapel pin?" Never mind that young Kennedy has chosen to serve his nation on a full-time basis, he wasn't, in the conservative columnist's eyes, patriotically correct.

There are other signs of a confusion in some quarters between patriotism and conformity. During the gulf war, peace vigils were occasionally disrupted by frat-house zealots. According to a study done by a media watchdog group, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, television executives virtually excised antiwar voices from the air. Bumper stickers advised good citizens to SAVE A FLAG, BURN A PROTESTER. And the nastiness didn't end with the hostilities overseas. One of the official entertainers for the June victory parade in Washington was radio talk-show personality Blake Clark, whose theme is, "If you aren't homeless, if you aren't sick, if you have all your body parts, if ^ you have a job, then just shut up."

Well, whoa there, Mr. Clark! No one should have to prove love of country by wearing an American-flag patch stitched tightly across the mouth. Let's recall what distinguishes our country from your run-of-the-mill nation-state. We Americans have no history of dynasties or dictators, no tradition of scraping and bowing, cringing or marching in step. This is a nation founded in revolution, birthed by rebels and dissidents. They had a lot to say on many subjects, like God and country, duty and freedom -- and none of it was "shut up."

Consider Tom Paine, the immigrant artisan who became the ablest propagandist of the American Revolution. At first he could find no one in Philadelphia willing to print the pamphlet he called Common Sense. It was too fiery, he was told, too seditious, and at this point a more cautious man might have learned to seal his lips. But finally a fellow radical, notorious, among other things, for living openly "in sin," agreed to roll the presses. Common Sense was born, with its great news that Americans had it in their power to overthrow the "crowned ruffians," the "royal brute," and "begin the world over again."

Most of the revolutionaries were wealthier, more respectable types than Paine, including, shamefully, even slave owners like Tom Jefferson. But whatever their limitations, they were all proud sons of the Enlightenment. They believed fiercely in the power of individual reason as a guide to action, which is why so many of them defied majority opinion with their radical views on God. Any 1990s-style political handler could have advised them to go to church and mouth the prayers along with everyone else, but men like Paine, Ben Franklin and John Adams were deists, holding that God had created the universe and then departed from the scene. Jefferson won the presidency despite being baited as an atheist, and Ethan Allen authored a scathing attack on Christianity, titled Reason, the Only Oracle of Man.

To these, our first patriots, freedom of speech, even jarring, unpopular speech, was a right worth dying for. Paine upheld "the right of every man to his opinion, however different that opinion may be to mine." Franklin said, "Without freedom of thought there can be no such thing as . . . publick liberty." Jefferson believed "uniformity of opinion" was no more desirable than uniformity "of face and stature." Staid George Washington warned against "the impostures of pretended patriotism."

! Jefferson's Declaration of Independence defines patriotism in an implicitly rebellious fashion. According to that precious document, we do not owe our allegiance to a government or its leaders -- and certainly not to its army or its flag -- but to each other and to our common right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness. "Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends," the Declaration states, "it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it . . ." Thus for Jefferson, dissent was not only a right but also a necessity: "I hold that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing . . ." God forbid, he added (meaning what he called "Nature's God"), that we should ever go 20 years without one.

And, fortunately, we've seldom had to go that long. Ten years after the Revolution, there was Shay's Rebellion, in which poor farmers challenged the new Republic's monied elite. In the 1820s and '30s, there was the Workingmen's Movement, pitted against the evils of "kingcraft, priestcraft and lawyercraft." That fed into the abolition movement, which in turn helped launch the women's suffrage movement in 1848. Near the turn of the century, there was the middle-class Progressive Movement for civic reform and a near insurrection by the new industrial working class. In our own time we've seen fresh rebellions on behalf of minority rights, women's rights, peace and disarmament, and gay rights.

In fact, dissidence ought to be regarded as one of our finest traditions and proudest exports to the world. The feminist movement began here and spread throughout the world. Our civil rights movement has inspired the downtrodden in dozens of nations, and gay rights was practically invented here. Jefferson, I daresay, would be proud.

Sure, it would be a quieter, tidier land if we all agreed on everything and, if those who didn't would shut up. But in the voice of the dissident, the oddball and the minority, however wrongheaded from one's own point of view, we should learn to hear the echoes of men like Jefferson and Paine. They didn't goose-step to the tune of the reigning authority. They didn't shut up when more timid souls said it wasn't wise to speak. And suppose they had? Then the flag we'd be pinning to our lapels today would be the Union Jack.