Dr. Forbush Thinks

During the 1960s I was a young patriot child. At least I knew that I was American and I knew that America was on the side of “good” in the war between “good” and “evil.”

I have particularly vivid memories of the summer of 1969. It had nothing to do with Woodstock or going to San Francisco with flowers in my hair. Instead it was the patriotic feeling that comes with going to a Fourth of July parade wearing the three-cornered hat of the American Revolution and carrying a toy musket. This was the summer when I was eight years old and many of my ideas about America began to interest and confuse me.

The previous summer we had traveled to Williamsburg, VA. My parents had always enjoyed history and architecture and a vacation to Williamsburg offered a place to study both. I learned about the colonial times and the founding of our country. This is where I got the musket and the three-cornered hat. The following year when our Banana Bikes became our horses we proudly fought the British the entire summer.

Later that July Apollo 11 landed on the moon and I couldn’t have felt prouder to be an American.

But, in 1969 we also traveled to Illinois to visit my cousins. Politics became a heated debate between my parents and my Aunt and Uncle. I listened and I learned quite a bit. Since the Democrat’s convention in 1968 had been held in Chicago, my uncle pointed out the convention center and the park where the protesters stood. Being only eight and being sheltered in my parent’s house I knew very little about the greater argument that was taking place in the country as a whole. In the months following this visit I actually asked questions about war and racism and poverty and the radical protesters of the 1960s. I learned of the brother of my mother’s friend who was killed in Vietnam and I couldn’t understand what they were fighting for. Amid all of this history that was happening I still had the backdrop of the Revolutionary War behind me.

If I think about the Revolutionary War and the people who fought in it I wonder what they saw that was so important that one would give their life for the cause. The simple fact about the war was that it centered on the exploitation of the colonists by the British doesn’t seem to effect the working class. The irony of this was that some of the colonists who had problems with the British were both exploiting slaves and exploiting working class employees.

But in 1775 when the Minutemen woke up early that April morning because of Paul Revere’s Ride we need to wonder why the farmers turned out. The farmers had strong feelings about the ownership of the land. Those feelings did not extend to the British who ruled from several thousand miles away. So, when the Minutemen heard that the British were coming to confiscate the weapons the colonists had collected together they left their homes and met the British head on at the North Bridge just outside of Concord. This standoff at the Bridge is romanticized as a true patriotic act. These farmers from Concord and Acton and other surrounding communities put their lives on the line to prevent the British from taking their weapons.

In my eight-year-old mind I could see that the protestors were also being patriotic. These protestors had realized that the government had gone astray and put the interests of international corporations ahead of the American people. This time those in opposition realized that the authority was fighting a war that wasn’t in the national interest of the people. But, at the very same time there were people who believed that stopping the spread of Communism was the highest of American values. Fighting this war was a patriotic endeavor. In fact, this group began to suggest that those who go against the government were not patriotic because the government was America. But they could be further from the truth, because American is the people, not the government. After all, Thomas Jefferson said it best, “Decent is the highest form of patriotism.”

When you muster the courage to stand up against the immense strength and power of authority in the form of government in the interest of the people you are truly being patriotic to the highest degree. I believe that is what I am doing in the blog. I believe this is what the group over at “Bring It On” and “Right Wing Nut” are doing. These are the true patriotic efforts of the modern age.


politics