In case you missed it, Rudy Giuliani is catching flak for his comments this week questioning the President's love, or hate, for America. This is not new, of course. There is a fringe element that has been saying these same things for eight years, from the very moment they first laid eyes on Barack Obama. But there is a reasonable voice out there as well, suggesting we think about it logically for a moment. How can anyone profess to know who loves the country and who does not? And what does that mean? We all love some things about it, but have concerns about other parts of it.
I think I love America. You probably think you love America. Conservatives insist that they love America, and so do progressives. The President and the First Lady must love America or else why would they have chosen to dedicate their lives to public service at the highest level? To get to the answers, we have to dig deeper and ask the even harder questions:
Do we love America as it is, or as we would like for it to be? When we see the flaws in America--too much liberalism or libertarianism, too much aggression and bigotry, too much disregard for tradition, or too much income inequality--and we choose to speak out, does that make us less patriotic...or more patriotic?
Who is the real American patriot? The one who sees things as they could be and asks 'Why not?"? Or the one who doesn't care?
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