Clinton and Kerry...priceless

[Cyrus]

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I questioned whether you thought saying "we will win the war on terror" is unpatriotic. I never said that if you don't believe in that statement, you are unpatriotic.

[/ QUOTE ]Claiming that "we are probably not winning the war on terror" is neither patriotic nor unpatriotic. Merely realistic (at least, as I see reality).

Sometimes patriotism calls upon people to be tricky with the truth, or simply lie. I know.

When I put question marks around the word "patriotic", I did no imply that it was un-patriotic. What I think is happening is that self-described patriots (or super-patriots) have reduced the whole debate about patriotism to a with-us-or-against-us stance, which is rather dangerous.


So, your original question...

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You would agree that saying we will win the war on terror ... [is a] patriotic action, right?

[/ QUOTE ] is to be answered with "No. It's not patriotic. It's not unpatriotic either. It's got little to do with patriotism. It's quite simply (and spectacularly) myopic."

[elscorcho768]

Ok, thanks for answering that for me. I personally think that saying we will will the war on terror is a patriotic statement, as in saying the opposite. Both can be patriotic if they do not say that our country is bad, and if they reflect freedom of speech and ideas. I just thought your statement was questioning the patriotism of saying we would win, which apparently it was not.

[troymclur]

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"McCain is far from a Dem in Repuplican garb. "

He's far from my idea of a Republican, about as far off the reservation as Bush.

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Yeah, because McCain is actually a conservative. People like to call McCain a RINO because he cares more about political ideals than blind party loyalty.

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What's conservative about threatening legislation to impose drug testing on baseball players?

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One issue does not define a man's political position. Bush increased Government spending, goign so far as to create an entirely new branch of government, an extremely liberal thing to do. But he is in no way, liberal. McCain also came out in favor of teaching Creationism along side Evolution, which is a fundamentalist standpoint, though McCain isn't a fundamentalist. Look at his voting record as a whole and there is no way you can characterize him as a liberal.

[Cyrus]

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I personally think that saying we will will the war on terror is a patriotic statement, as [also is] saying the opposite.

[/ QUOTE ]OK, but one set of patriots has to be right and the other wrong in their respective assessments, objectively.

If my friend plays in a poker game and shows me his hole cards to be Jack-Ten and the board comes Eight-Nine-Seven rainbow, my friendship is not measured by how I comment on that player's chances of winning the round. If I comment that he is a strong favorite, I'm not more of a friend; if I say he is a distant dog, I'm not less of a friend (I'm simply ignoring the facts out there).

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Both can be patriotic if they do not say that our country is bad.

[/ QUOTE ] I'm sorry but my sense of patriotism rests on a higher notion of what one's country is. The acid test is the case of White Rose, the small underground resistance unit working against the Nazis in Germany. In doing so, those young men and women were indeed working against their country, which was involved in a brutal, total war, moreover. Yet they were claiming to be German patriots - and today we honor their memory for being precisely that.

Can you not accept the same criterion for American patriotism? Are Americans still supposed to go by the bankrupt notion of "My Country, Right Or Wrong" ?