Questioning Obama's patriotism: A tale of pompousness and nationalism

[usregimechange]

My former Republican congressman recently quoted Obama saying the following:

“The true test of the American ideal is whether we're able to recognize our failings…”

He then compares it with m-w definition ("a person who loves his country") and states that Obama's quote "seems diametrically opposed to Webster’s definition." Other than confusing patriotism with nationalism what he doesn't dare do is quote what else Obama said in the speech he selectively quoted:

In other eras, across distant lands, this question could be answered with relative ease and certainty. As a servant in Rome, you knew you’d spend your life forced to build somebody else’s Empire. As a peasant in 11th Century China, you knew that no matter how hard you worked, the local warlord might come and take everything you had—and you also knew that famine might come knocking at the door. As a subject of King George, you knew that your freedom of worship and your freedom to speak and to build your own life would be ultimately limited by the throne.

And then America happened.

A place where destiny was not a destination, but a journey to be shared and shaped and remade by people who had the gall, the temerity to believe that, against all odds, they could form “a more perfect union” on this new frontier.

And as people around the world began to hear the tale of the lowly colonists who overthrew an empire for the sake of an idea, they started to come. Across oceans and the ages, they settled in Boston and Charleston, Chicago and St. Louis, Kalamazoo and Galesburg, to try and build their own American Dream. This collective dream moved forward imperfectly—it was scarred by our treatment of native peoples, betrayed by slavery, clouded by the subjugation of women, shaken by war and depression. And yet, brick by brick, rail by rail, calloused hand by calloused hand, people kept dreaming, and building, and working, and marching, and petitioning their government, until they made America a land where the question of our place in history is not answered for us. It’s answered by us.

He has no idea what patriotism really is. Patriotism without self-reflection, humility, and redemption is intellectual and moral subversion.

[elleng]

1. 'Professional' Reps., if they ever understood it,

publicly misrepresent what is America, and their 'base' more and more appears never to have HEARD ANY OF IT.

[usregimechange]

2. I bet he has only read the half of a sentence he quoted