No. I think they are doing a dangerous job for any number of reasons, including love of country or a sense of duty. But loving your country and feeling a sense of duty towards it doesn’t preclude you from loving other things more (your family, your friends, your God), or from feeling a sense of duty to more important things as well.

And, from your liberal perspective, do you think that deserters, who choose to not go to a war that they don’t agree with, are putting their country, and what they think is right for it, before all else?

Personally, I think that the duty to one’s honor and one’s conscience, after pledging to go to war, of fulfilling that pledge, is more important than one’s duty to his political belief that the war is misguided. So no, I don’t think desertion is some kind of noble sacrifice. (But this ordering is clearly dependent on a level of decency and chivalry in our national life — I would probably feel differently about a German deserter during the second world war, although even in that case, there are commitments to fellow soldiers, civilians, etc, that make the calculus difficult.)

But, as a matter of principal, let me ask you this. Do you think people who voluntarily sign up for the military, understanding that they could have to go to war, and possibly get killed, put country before all else? And, from your liberal perspective, do you think that deserters, who choose to not go to a war that they don’t agree with, are putting their country, and what they think is right for it, before all else? I sure do. Even if I think that they are dishonest, lying cowards who are unwilling to meet the commitment that they made. They sacrifice their own dignity and their image of themselves as honest and upstanding for something.

Now, do I think it’s possible to be patriotic and also put other things before that? I’m not really sure. Perhaps the problem with America today is that it’s not acceptable to say, “I”m glad for what I have, but being patriotic is not my first priority.”

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He’s just having trouble finding a position that can energize a party that believes in smaller government, and increases the power of the executive branch….a party that loves the second amendment, but not so much the first. A party that wants to deregulate all markets and then is befuddled when the markets screw regular people. Hell, he even tried to use Obama’s symbol. I sorta feel bad for him, but I don’t think you need to try to apply logic to his statements, he’s just pandering to a base he cannot find.

I have been thinking about patriotism a lot lately and have come to the conclusion that it has morphed into an ugly caricature of what it once was. Patriotism gets used to justify all sorts of evil, stupid and silly things. Just yesterday the Republican candidate for the president of these great younited states stood up and said that if we had only bombed more and fought harder we would have “won” Vietnam. That statement sounds patriotic and good and no doubt played well among the reality-deniers that seem to be all that is left of the republican party, these days, but it exposes him as an almost Bushian dumb fuck.

We have seen patriotism perverted beyond our wildest nightmares by the Bushies into a justification for doing everything they can to cancel our freedoms. Bush, who actually seems to believe he is some sort of hyper-patriot, never appears without 15 American flags around him and a flag lapel pin. I personally think they are there so he can remember what country he is in at the moment, but the real reason is so he can gull the rubes into believing that the profoundly anti-patriotic things that he does are good and wholesome and all-American.

I can’t help but think that the world would be a saner and more peaceful place if patriotism were eradicated. Of course, if that happened, politicians would have to invent something else to distract us from what they are really doing. It is ironic that Jesse Helms died today, on the most holy of patriotic days. He spent a lifetime flagrantly waving a flag while he ass-raped freedom. He will be eulogized as a great American patriot, I am sure.

I rest my case…