Flying the Flag

Wearing an American Flag pin doesn't make you patriotic. The pin on the politician's suits has become more of a political statement than a show of support for what America used to stand for in the world. What am I getting at? The pin drives me crazy. When I see a politician wearing it I think a little less of him/her...immediately. The only thing they are doing is tarnishing the flag.

Mark Schmitt wrote on this phenomenon today. Pull quote:

I am, I admit, more concerned about what my country does, how it conducts itself, how it lives up to its unique aspirations than I am by something that happened to [9/11] our country. That's not alienation from my country; it's patriotism in a democracy. It's the belief that we bear some responsibility for the actions of our country, and even if we opposed them, we should ask what more we could have done.

Read the rest here.