TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/070891/0708640.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 6.2 KB | 127 lines

                                                                                ESSAY, Page 66

Real Patriots Speak Their Minds


By Barbara Ehrenreich


    Patriotism should bring us together but not so close that
we begin to look like sheep. One could detect the bleatings of
the herd in a recent televised exchange between columnist
Robert Novak and Congressman Joe Kennedy. Frustrated by the
Congressman's failure to agree with him on a range of issues,
Novak suddenly snapped, "Where's your American-flag lapel pin?"
Never mind that young Kennedy has chosen to serve his nation on
a full-time basis, he wasn't, in the conservative columnist's
eyes, patriotically correct.

    There are other signs of a confusion in some quarters
between patriotism and conformity. During the gulf war, peace
vigils were occasionally disrupted by frat-house zealots.
According to a study done by a media watchdog group, Fairness
and Accuracy in Reporting, television executives virtually
excised antiwar voices from the air. Bumper stickers advised
good citizens to SAVE A FLAG, BURN A PROTESTER. And the
nastiness didn't end with the hostilities overseas. One of the
official entertainers for the June victory parade in Washington
was radio talk-show personality Blake Clark, whose theme is, "If
you aren't homeless, if you aren't sick, if you have all your
body parts, if you have a job, then just shut up."

    Well, whoa there, Mr. Clark! No one should have to prove
love of country by wearing an American-flag patch stitched
tightly across the mouth. Let's recall what distinguishes our
country from your run-of-the-mill nation-state. We Americans
have no history of dynasties or dictators, no tradition of
scraping and bowing, cringing or marching in step. This is a
nation founded in revolution, birthed by rebels and dissidents.
They had a lot to say on many subjects, like God and country,
duty and freedom -- and none of it was "shut up."

    Consider Tom Paine, the immigrant artisan who became the
ablest propagandist of the American Revolution. At first he
could find no one in Philadelphia willing to print the pamphlet
he called Common Sense. It was too fiery, he was told, too
seditious, and at this point a more cautious man might have
learned to seal his lips. But finally a fellow radical,
notorious, among other things, for living openly "in sin,"
agreed to roll the presses. Common Sense was born, with its
great news that Americans had it in their power to overthrow the
"crowned ruffians," the "royal brute," and "begin the world over
again."

    Most of the revolutionaries were wealthier, more
respectable types than Paine, including, shamefully, even slave
owners like Tom Jefferson. But whatever their limitations, they
were all proud sons of the Enlightenment. They believed fiercely
in the power of individual reason as a guide to action, which
is why so many of them defied majority opinion with their
radical views on God. Any 1990s-style political handler could
have advised them to go to church and mouth the prayers along
with everyone else, but men like Paine, Ben Franklin and John
Adams were deists, holding that God had created the universe and
then departed from the scene. Jefferson won the presidency
despite being baited as an atheist, and Ethan Allen authored a
scathing attack on Christianity, titled Reason, the Only Oracle
of Man.

    To these, our first patriots, freedom of speech, even
jarring, unpopular speech, was a right worth dying for. Paine
upheld "the right of every man to his opinion, however different
that opinion may be to mine." Franklin said, "Without freedom
of thought there can be no such thing as . . . publick
liberty." Jefferson believed "uniformity of opinion" was no more
desirable than uniformity "of face and stature." Staid George
Washington warned against "the impostures of pretended
patriotism."

    Jefferson's Declaration of Independence defines patriotism
in an implicitly rebellious fashion. According to that precious
document, we do not owe our allegiance to a government or its
leaders -- and certainly not to its army or its flag -- but to
each other and to our common right to liberty and the pursuit of
happiness. "Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive
of these ends," the Declaration states, "it is the Right of the
People to alter or abolish it . . ." Thus for Jefferson, dissent
was not only a right but also a necessity: "I hold that a little
rebellion now and then is a good thing . . ." God forbid, he
added (meaning what he called "Nature's God"), that we should
ever go 20 years without one.

    And, fortunately, we've seldom had to go that long. Ten
years after the Revolution, there was Shay's Rebellion, in which
poor farmers challenged the new Republic's monied elite. In the
1820s and '30s, there was the Workingmen's Movement, pitted
against the evils of "kingcraft, priestcraft and lawyercraft."
That fed into the abolition movement, which in turn helped
launch the women's suffrage movement in 1848. Near the turn of
the century, there was the middle-class Progressive Movement
for civic reform and a near insurrection by the new industrial
working class. In our own time we've seen fresh rebellions on
behalf of minority rights, women's rights, peace and
disarmament, and gay rights.

    In fact, dissidence ought to be regarded as one of our
finest traditions and proudest exports to the world. The
feminist movement began here and spread throughout the world.
Our civil rights movement has inspired the downtrodden in dozens
of nations, and gay rights was practically invented here.
Jefferson, I daresay, would be proud.

    Sure, it would be a quieter, tidier land if we all agreed
on everything and, if those who didn't would shut up. But in
the voice of the dissident, the oddball and the minority,
however wrongheaded from one's own point of view, we should
learn to hear the echoes of men like Jefferson and Paine. They
didn't goose-step to the tune of the reigning authority. They
didn't shut up when more timid souls said it wasn't wise to
speak. And suppose they had? Then the flag we'd be pinning to
our lapels today would be the Union Jack.