Patriotism, An Opinion Indicator

This is a particular frustration for me: these new insincere definitions society is giving to words. We’re so comfortable and safefeeling that we can treat a word like Patriotism as an opinion indicator. We get to pretend we are pacifists – intellectually and morally superior to the ignoramuses who think war is ever needed – and associate hurt feelings to the word Patriot.

Wars happen because of aggressors – people willing to kill for what they want or feel is there’s. If we didn’t have patriots willing to kill aggressors, no University or pacifist could exist. By the very nature of the pacifist, it will be overcome quickly by the aggressor – if not for the patriot willing to do the pacifist’s killing for him while he reads anti-war books and releases torture memos.

That senseless rallying of people to hate, that’s necessary too if you want to keep your progressive society. No, we can’t be like Europe and have a civil-service equivalent of a military – because we don’t have a US to depend on for defense. Even is you happen to disagree with a particular decision, you still have to value the fact that we have patriots willing to carry out that decision.

Sorry you got hurt feelings over being called unpatriotic Dr. Dove. But shake it off and respect the people who did all the killing that secured this world you’re such a master of – by at least keeping their description. What else can you call them? Contingency reducers extraordinaire? Don’t let the media and popular culture pollute everything! It’s like “torture” and “massacre” – words that get used to invoke a feeling rather than describe something aligned with their actual historical or logical meaning.