If your answer is 9.11 ties, you’re wrong. There are no ties to 9.11 and Iraq or Hussein. There are ties to Saudi Arabia but for some reason they were ignored and we’ve still yet to address them from a federal level.
If your answer is WMD, you’re wrong. For the sake of the argument, I’ll concede and say Iraq had WMD. They’ve been found, destroyed, deactivated, moved, etc. by now. If this is why we went there, because of WMD, why are we still there?

Personally, I’m struggling to find an acceptable reason for going to war in Iraq. Not to mention that there probably isn’t one, but we should have known something was up when war wasn’t properly declared. We were too upset about 9.11 to question our Commander in Chief at the time. This is completely understandable. We wanted vengeance for our dead. In retrospect, we can’t say it was right, but it was understandable.

What does this have to do with bread and circuses?

During the 2008 Presidential election, Obama was trumpeting his plans to end the Iraq war. To this day I remain convinced that this is exactly why he won the election. That, and because McCain said he’d stay in Iraq indefinitely. So it is now two years after his campaign and we’ve yet to see any signs of our military leaving Iraq. We’ve had a “declaration” from Obama naming July 2011 as the drawdown date for the Iraq war. But we also have General Petraeus noting that he reserves the right to tell the President it was “too early.” because the drawdown is “conditions based” and evidently there is some sort of benchmark they’re watching.

Well given that nothing has changed from George W Bush to Barrack H Obama over the absolute biggest item from the 2008 Presidential campaigns, surely the voters are upset and the media is reporting on it. Oh silly me, I forgot we’re now back to our apathetic and complacent selves. We’re literally fighting secret wars, permanently harming a new generation of Iraqis, all the while being told that the Iraq war could go on until an unrealized, undeclared goal is met. Oh and remember, the war in Afghanistan is also going well… Given the recent news about Russia supplying Iran’s nuclear program, we’re also hearing the drums of war rumbling as the saber rattling begins.

Ignore all that though. Our media has the “politically active” up in arms about the proposed racists in the conservative group or up in arms about the millions of illegal aliens in the country. More recently, we have the news that a Muslim community center containing a mosque is being built two blocks away from the World Trade Center’s ashes. Some people haven’t learned from the blindness and unquestioning actions our country undertook when going to war in Iraq. Some of us now think it should be illegal for a person to build a community center with a mosque just because their religion is incompatible with the attacks of 9.11 and their vicinity of the World Trade Center. Let me ask you this, do you really want to give the power to the government to allow or disallow a person buying property and building what they want on that property? Do you see any sort of slippery slope here? I digress.

As important as the enforcing of laws and the rights of private property are, we’re missing the point!

This is the modern day circus. In the fall of the Roman Empire, the people were given bread and circuses to distract them from reality. Well guess what folks, this is our circus! The 24 hour news cycle and constant barrage of Internet news and commentary is our circus. We love getting all puffed up and energized and feeling righteous about OUR cause and those in charge of the circus know that. The lines are being drawn between you and the person you have ideological differences with. In the middle of the fuss, while we’re all distracted, trillions of dollars are going from tax payers to corporations. The medical industry, military-industrial complex, the financial industry, they are all laughing their way to the bank.

The quicker you realize the distractions divide you from your fellow citizens, the quicker you can find a common ground in collectively refusing the ruling class to continue it’s fleecing of the people.

Most people, regardless of political philosophy, would agree that constantly taking money from the taxpayer to bailout private companies is bad.

Most people, regardless of political philosophy, would agree that trillion dollar deficits are incredibly detrimental to the country’s future.

Most people, regardless of political philosophy, would agree that the phony paper money system we’ve been tricked into adopting is absolute garbage.

Most people, regardless of political philosophy, would agree that the endless wars, death, and chaos that WE are responsible for needs to come to an end.

Stop with the upholding of the two-party system and the bickering and thinking of your neighbors as philosophical enemies and realize there are very important things that need to be addressed. We all need all the help we can get.

It is here. At some point, I was expecting the government to step up and make service mandatory. The draft was too inflammatory as far as political correctness goes. But “serving your country” in other ways will be construed as patriotic and American. Well here it is.

The sponsor of the bill probably won’t shock you.

Charles Rangel
Democrat – New York

That’s right! The same guy who has lied about owning property abroad to avoid taxation and who is now under investigation for tax fraud amongst other things, he is proposing that if you’re between 18 and 42 years of age, you should be required to “serve” your country in some form or another. Doesn’t that just sound like liberty incarnate. I, for one, would love to serve this guy! He seems like an honorable, moral, freedom loving guy. I’ll serve two years being watchdog of crooked Senators and Congress-critters. How about that?

How do you define patriotism?
Buying American goods and services?
Wearing the colors?
Joining a branch of the military to serve the country?

Something lost in our current political society of twenty-four hour news is the connection of these two ideas. On one hand you have the concept of pushing against the established political establishment to protest and make changes. On the other hand you have the selfless praise and pride of the established political establishment.

We have been told as of late that supporting the federal government is patriotism. Many say we’re involved in pro-active wars, undeclared by Congress, with the support of the populous, because of the constructed patriotism.
We have been subliminally taught that people who are a little nuts are civilly disobedient. Many say this is a way to discredit the ideas that go against the grain of the current establishment/government/political movement.

The problem here is that these aren’t ideas established by the United States of America or by Americans. The modern definitions are very much a creation of large government pushing political movements and the media blindly (debatable) regurgitating the, dare I say, propaganda created by the federal government. Ignoring what we’re taught by our government and media, the root definitions of these ideas are still more American than most of us realize.

These are two ideas that are at the core of the creation of this country in its original and re-established (post Civil War) form. The colonies were created in imperialistic fashion. The problems of taxation without representation grew to a point that our forefathers actually seceded from England. Secession is a form of civil disobedience. We did not sail to England to shove our muskets in the face of the monarchy. We declared independence from England. We created the states and united them under the idea of patriotism. The unorganized members of the original military didn’t sacrifice their life and limb because they were best friends with their fellow militiamen. The fought and died for the ideas behind their flag and their country.

The act of this country’s creation and its very next act (to defend the truth and validity of the first act) were civil disobedience and patriotism.

As many people are discounting ideas this old-fashioned and antiquated, I’ll have you think back to the nineteen-sixties. Don’t take for granted that you (if you are a minority), or one of your friends or family (if your friends or family are a minority), or fellow citizens (if you don’t fit the two prior categories) can eat in the same place as the established “majority”. Don’t think that humans being treated equally is a long established concept in American history. Slavery was over in the nineteen-sixties but the tragedy of our own history in social justice is we still had people dying for equal rights.

Civil disobedience brought Rosa Parks validity.
Civil disobedience brought Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s words and dreams into real life.
In the end, civil disobedience in the civil rights movement gave liberty to millions and opened the mind and hearts of hundreds of millions.

Whoever denies the beauty and awesomeness of liberty given by the movement towards equality is truly blind. The death and hatred in the civil rights movement were brought to the forefront of everyone’s minds and as the true life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness loving people we are as a country, we could not let the injustice continue. Yes people were hurt and killed in the process. Yes they risked their lives, property, and prosperity. These were not politicians or people running for office. These were and are people just as we are. These were and are people with jobs, kids, mortgages, and lives just as we are.

Did they value their life less because they risked it for liberty?
Was their schedule not nearly as busy as ours so that they were free to educate themselves and others?
Why do we tell ourselves that we are so weak and powerless as to dishonor what real patriots have done before us?
Why is this the last well documented, well reported, massive act of civil disobedience in American history?

If you want to measure your patriotism…
don’t worry about the number of flags you own…
don’t count the number of radio talk shows you listen to…
don’t using your voting record as a “I told you so”…
don’t count the number of signs that you have waved at people driving by who are almost entirely ignoring you…
don’t count the number of e-mails, faxes, and phone calls you have sent to your representatives (which end up being answered by a staffer, some canned responses or ignored altogether)…

measure your patriotism by the number of family members you’d be willing to say goodbye to forever for your cause!

measure your patriotism by the fiscal sacrifice you make to help not yourself but others!

measure your patriotism by the luxuries you are willing to forgo to make sure that liberty doesn’t just apply to whoever has the favor of the current administration!

measure your patriotism by the freedom to pray to any God you choose!

measure your patriotism by the respect you give your fellow human being in their choice to pray to a different God!

measure your patriotism by the respect you give your fellow human being in their choice to believe in no god!

measure your patriotism not by the pain you feel in your heart when you see the country being attacked, but by the stink you raise in opposition to the attack!

Ask your favorite veteran about the times they said goodbye before they left for duty. Ask them why they risked their life and chance to see their family again. Could you make this sacrifice? Would you give up your life for the cause of liberty? Would you die for the liberty of another man’s faith who does not match your own? As a Christian, would you die fightining for a Muslim’s freedom of religion? As a Muslim, would you die fighting for the freedom of a Christian? As an atheist, would you die for the liberty for your fellow man to pray to whichever deity he or she chooses?

This is your measure of patriotism. The sacrifice you will make for freedom of all even in opposition to your personal views and faith. This is the measure of your stars and bars and the pride in your liberty loving country.

This is the most American act and idea that has ever existed. Civil disobedience and patriotism are America.

“And so my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country” -John F. Kennedy