Never Enough Patriotic Responses Department
Edited from a post to the Transgender Headbangers group:
I'm not just an American, I'm a patriot.
I'm the kind of patriot who would rather burn Old Glory than let some redneck throw beer cans out his truck onto our American roads.
I'm the kind of patriot who doesn't like it when the US administration treats the rest of the world with arrogance, scorn, domination, and cruelty.
I'm the kind of patriot who hates the fact that her nation has become sheeplike, oblivious to the abattoir at the end of the path of gluttony and ignorance.
I'm the kind of patriot who doesn't appreciate having a cokehead President who hasn't even bothered to travel outside the US, who throws his weight around, disregards international law and diplomacy, and turns a $200 billion surplus into a $600 billion deficit in a single year.
I'm the kind of patriot who'd rather fix her own neighborhood than meddle in the affairs of others, and wishes her government were wise enough to do the same.
I'm the kind of patriot who is wary of binary dichotomies, especially in politics, and thinks a two-party political system is only marginally better than a one-party system.
I'm the kind of patriot who thinks all media is inherently biased, but therefore reads Arab and American news alike in search of balance and truth.
I'm the kind of patriot who'd rather be outspoken than silenced by neoconservative fundamentalist lunatics.
I'm the kind of patriot who thinks freedom isn't inhereted, but earned, and that every generation must stand up to attempts at restricting rights or else lose them irrevocably.
I'm the kind of patriot who knows America not as a body of land, a system of government, a nation of people, but as a set of ideals to which all Americans should aspire. That includes the President, by the way.
So I hope that explains where I'm coming from.