Some Guiding Principles: True Patriotism

Our strength is not in military or economic power, but in support of others.

True patriots believe in and work for the common good, not just for their selfish interests, friends, or class. They know that our power comes not from economic output or military might, but from our values and never-ending effort to live up to our founding ideals, namely all persons’ equality and inalienable rights. This means equality found in the “free market,” not just in theoretical abstractions for Sunday sermons, political speeches or high school forensic contests.

We all know that there is something basically wrong with a system that pays a 25-year-old Wall Street bond trader tens of millions, and a 55-year-old school teacher tens of thousands. Kansas income tax reinforces those values when its highest tax bracket is $60,000. That means a person making 60 million—or perhaps more reasonably, a quarter or half million, a million, or 2.5 million—pays the same income percentage as someone making $60 thousand.

America deserves leaders who will level with us, who remind us that our worth is a consequence of our contributions to society, and that those benefiting the most owe the greatest debt of gratitude and service.

Imagine an elected leader, unafraid, who pushes us to curb our most unhealthy national habits and urges us to fulfill our healthiest impulses. Can we have elected leaders who put party and self secondary to country—and gets elected? It depends on us.

Can we have a country where being an active citizen brings fulfillment, emotionally and spiritually, where a town hall is filled with folks in a renewal of civic awakening, and those same crowds fill our clubs, churches, and political discussions. It depends on us.

Can we have a country where employers see workers not as unit labor costs, but as whole human beings, creators, not merely workers—or in another shop, consumer/customers, a state where the economy exists to serve us, not the other way around? It depends on us.

Imagine the pride—and the gratitude—our children and grandchildren will feel for us when we make the hard decisions to shift our perspective and (for example) vote against carbon-based fossil fuel use that would leave our land a desert, and instead provide for them a harmonious, sustainable community, with an enriching relationship with each other and the earth, a new economy not propped up by military protection for the privileged which bankrupts the less fortunate. Can it happen? It depends on us.

I believe we can do it. We can stop being mere workers and consumers, and become citizens. We can raise our sights, make our grandchildren proud, and become the true patriots we are so seldom urged, these days, to become. It just. Depends. On us.