I can't help if I'm a patriot

[Christa]

I was raised to love this country by parents who struggled through the Great Depression and World War II. My mom once saved up 17 cents to buy her mother a coal bucket as a Christmas gift. My dad was the son of Scottish immigrants. He went to war and visited some of the worst hellholes in Europe as the Fighting Thunderbirds of the 45th infantry went up the boot of Italy to Anzio and later to southern France and into Germany. After the war he took a job with the Veteran's Administration to help the GI's move on to better lives than the ones they had in miserable muddy foxholes.

I learned from them that poverty does not have to be permanent and that evil can be overcome. They were proud New Deal Democrats who knew that government was supposed to be of the people, for the people and by the people.

Love of country means standing up for its highest ideals, not its most shameful legacies of bigotry, violence and greed.

How is it love of country when John McCain votes against virtually every piece of legislation that would help working class people achieve a better standard of living, work safer on their jobs, have more time to be with their families and look forward to a better life for their kids? Doesn't he have any understanding of the stress and fear that stalks the lives of working class people today? These are the very people who built his seven houses, dressed his wife and worked hard for Corporate America so he could enjoy the fruits of corporate lobbyist largesse.

How is it patriotism when Sarah Palin blithely threatens a war on Russia? Russia has repelled every foreign invader in its long history, always at a fearful cost in human life and suffering. Doesn't she know that Russia is armed with nuclear missiles and that a war with that country could end in an atomic apocalypse? Maybe she thinks her good Christian soul will be beamed up to heaven out of the smoking radioactive ruins.

http://www.bobboblog.org/bobbo-52