Proudly Patriotic

Recent events (the election, Sandy Hook, drone strikes on American citizens, gay rights votes) have created a lot of debate on a variety of topics centered on the government of this country and the people to whom that government belongs. These debates have been polarizing to say the least, and have uncovered something, an underlying problem that I personally find more disturbing than the problems that brought it to light in the first place. Patriotism has, somewhere along the way, become a bad word to an alarming number of people.

When I was a kid, growing up, as far back as I can remember, we said the Pledge of Allegiance in school at the start of the day. We all stood up, we all held our hands over our hearts, and we were all proud to be part of the best country on earth, bar none. Our parents didn't call the school and try to excuse us from this activity, rather, most would make sure that their children, at a young age, could recite the Pledge without falter so they could join in at school.

"I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

It varies from state to state, but with roughly 200 days in a school year, and 12 years of school, I recited this pledge at least 2400 times in my life before I even turned 18. My father was a United States Marine, a fact of which I have always been proud. My grandfather was a WWII Navy veteran, of which I am also proud. When I see an American flag waving in a breeze, I feel pride, and there's nothing wrong with that. Note the words of the pledge. We did not pledge allegiance to the president, or the congressmen, or SCOTUS. We pledged our allegiance to the flag, and what it represents, and to this very day, I still consider that pledge to be very meaningful.

I've heard, or even talked to, people who think being patriotic is somehow funny. It becomes the butt of jokes about rednecks, their guns, and "Merka!" and I am constantly reminding myself not to 1. tell someone to Fuck Off and & 2. punch someone in the face. The 1st Amendment is protection of freedom of speech from government, not personal, repercussion.

The media and politicians have warped our nations values, and no, I'm not talking about religious values. You don't have to be Christian to be moral and have good values. Sorry to break the news to you, but there are an awful lot of Muslims, Jews and yes, even atheists, out there who have good values and a functioning moral compass. By making it somehow a bad thing to be a patriot, they've stripped people of that foundation upon which American values are built.The sheep are everywhere and it's depressing. Of course, conservative republicans are going to immediately say I'm referring to liberals. Well, I'm talking to you too.

As a patriot of this country, I believe in equality for all citizens. I believe wholeheartedly in the rights granted us by the Constitution. I believe in things like innocent before proven guilty. As our government slowly strips those rights away from us, I stand amazed at the number of people who seem not to care. The Patriot Act is one, long, massive violation of our constitutional rights as Americans, and the conservative republicans could care less because it was a Bush policy so it's OK (if a Democratic president had put forth the same thing, they'd have had a shit fit). They think as long as it doesn't affect me, and they keep using it to catch bad people, I'm OK with that. Well, I'm not. Infringement on our rights, ANY citizens rights, is a bad thing. Our second amendment rights are next on the chopping block. Now it's the liberal democrats who are "OK" with it. They don't have any guns in their house, so who cares. If the crazy rednecks can't have their machine guns anymore, I'm all for banning assault weapons! Wrong answer.

People need to stop and think. The Patriot Act gave the government the right to snoop on you at any time, and the only lame excuse they need is to BELIEVE you're a terrorist. Of course, this includes domestic terrorists, so don't think because you're white and christian you're excluded. It also gave them the right to detain you without trial, indefinitely. With one swish of the pen, the Patriot Act stripped American citizens of their 4th, 5th and 6th Amendment rights and they cheered like sheep. But still, the populace is armed, and an armed populace, even one who has given their rights up without realizing it, will not relinquish those rights so easily when their turn comes.

Now the government is coming after "assault weapons". Well of course they are you say, they're dangerous, no one needs to hunt deer with a semi automatic rifle in a common military caliber!
So, hunting deer with a black semi-automatic rifle in 5.56 is bad. But hunting one with a brown semi automatic in .308 is OK? Um, I have news for you...

Jarred Lautner used a handgun. The initial reports indicated Adam Lanza left his scary black assault rifle in the trunk, and the coroners report has confirmed that he only used handguns, but politicians continue to use it as a soapbox for an assault weapons ban and Piers Morgan continues to rave about how Adam Lanza used one of these deadly assault rifles (Fucker, I've got news for you, being on the wrong end of ANY gun is deadly). Of the roughly 12,000 homicides in this country last year, approximately half were by handgun, while only about 2% were with a rifle of any kind. Why aren't politicians trying to ban handguns? I've talked to some pretty dense people on the subject of gun control, but make no mistake, politicians are NOT stupid, no matter how much they may appear so. It doesn't even require common sense to be able to look at statistics and facts, which clearly prove that "assault rifles" are not a danger to the populace, not nearly as much so as handguns (in the hands of criminals and irresponsible citizens, not in mine, and if you come to take mine, you'll find the only person they're a danger to, is you) Therefore, there is only one logical reason that they want assault rifles out of the hands of ordinary citizens.

There are 100 million gun owners in this country who own over 300 million guns. But in the end, if they decide to come take the rest of your rights away, or if we decide that we've had enough of them ruining our country, they know that a mob armed with handguns, shotguns and bolt action rifles doesn't stand a chance, but a militia armed with semi-automatic rifles would represent the end of their reign. The only reason for taking these rifles away from you, is so that you can't fight back when they take the rest of your rights.

I'm not paranoid, and I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but if you think for one minute that you can demonstrate FACTS as to why the government would want to enact and enforce an assault weapons ban, I'm all ears. But don't be an idiot and say "they're dangerous" or "there's no reason you need them" I can tell you half a dozen reasons I need one, you can't tell me one real reason why I don't.

And it all boils down to Patriotism. Patriotism is what will make people stand up and tell our government, you can't have our guns, you can't take our rights, and if you try to take either one, the only thing you'll get is a funeral. By stripping that away, or by making it somehow taboo to be a patriot and to love your country, the media and politicians have pacified half the population without even trying.

If you've ever read the Bill of Rights and then followed it up by looking at some of the documents commonly referred to as the Federalist Papers, you know it was written by patriots. People who were patriotic about a country that didn't even officially exist yet. But they had a vision for it, and it existed in their minds and in their hearts. This might seem to some like a second amendment rights rant, and in a way, I suppose it might be. But there is a reason for it. There is no speculation, it is very clear that the Founders intended for the second amendment to be used, by patriots, in defense of the other 9. We say that such a day when it is needed will never come. But they had already experienced that day. When their country had stripped their rights away, leaving them with no choice but to be slaves, or to fight for the rights they believed in.

In relative terms, our country is very young. barely over 200 years old, when most european countries, in some way shape or form, have been around for twice as long or more. Many asian countries have have unchanged borders for millennium. We've come a very long way in those 236 years, and we got to this point because of patriots. When we went to war in WWI and WWII, we weren't defending the USA, at no point was the mainland of our country truly threatened. Yet hundreds of thousands of patriots volunteered to go to war because what was being threatened was a way of life. And now we've taken that for granted. This is it, the last barrier. Once they've taken away our only means of defending ourselves from the government, they can take anything else they want at will. They've made us fat, content and just happy enough to consider it someone else's problem. Half this country suffers from "that can't happen to me" syndrome. Call me paranoid, call me whatever you want, but if there's one thing I've learned, it's that if you can't think something can't happen to you, it almost certainly can, and quite frequently will.

So educate yourself. The next time you hear Feinstein or Obama talking about gun violence and assault weapons, go to the library, go online (there are still reliable sources of information online, it's not all facebook, porn and lies) or ask someone you know personally that knows about guns about the facts. Read the constitution, read the federalist papers. Go to a gun range and find out for yourself why millions of Americans find it as enjoyable a hobby as bowling or tennis -but please, if you've never handled a gun, go with someone responsible and safe, or take a gun safety course first, I've personally taught multiple people how to safely handle firearms, and all of them have enjoyed target shooting, they're all alive and uninjured, and to my knowledge, they all still own firearms-

But, if you blindly eat up all the BS they feed you:
Dangerous weapons intended for military purposes. (really? if we gave semi-automatic rifles to our military, they'd be slaughtered in actual combat)
Capable of shooting down airplanes and blowing up trains (TY Rev Jackson, I always knew you were a racist, but I had no idea you were such an incredible dumbass too)
That somehow adding a rail to a rifle and painting it black makes it a "dangerous assault weapon" vs a hunting rifle. (sure, and adding neon lights and a giant spoiler to my wife's car will make a it a "tuner")
That somehow, the 2nd amendment doesn't apply to rifles unless they are hunting rifles. (anyone who can think for themselves can clearly discover that hunting was the furthest thing from their minds when the founding fathers wrote the second amendment)

In the end I went off on a tangent, but the fact remains, somehow we've become a nation where being patriotic is a bad thing. It's frowned upon. It makes you an unsophisticated hillbilly/redneck with no education and an alcohol problem (funny thing though, drinking a bottle of wine a day or a bottle of expensive tequila every weekend doesn't make you an alcoholic as long as you're drinking it in an expensive house, but drinking a couple beers a once or twice a week after a hard day at work means you've got a problem, but I digress...). Funny thing is though, when they come to take the rest of your rights away, it's going to be a "Patriot" with a gun that stands up for those rights. Or maybe we won't. Maybe when the dust settles, we'll send you somewhere you can settle happily with a whole country with little to no national pride. Maybe Canada. You'll fit in there. We'll keep our Bill of Rights here.

So here I am. I'm patriotic about my country. I love the United States of America. I love what it stands for. The Democrats and the Republicans just want to slowly divide it up into their own private little baronies overseen by the king. They want you to be a serf. They want their rich friends to stay rich so they can continue to suck that teat and live the high life, while they keep you on the low. They want to rape you with taxes that leave you with just enough money to scrape by so that the only thing you care about is working hard enough to have a few nice things, and to care about those things enough that rising up against them would never be an option, because it would threaten the bubble in which you've lived your life. I believe that a time is coming soon when we're going to find out who the patriots are and who they aren't. Which side of that line are you going to be standing on?