TW3 and the Poison Pill

November 10th, 2009

Photo: Tobias Higbie / flickr

That Was The Week That Was … up and down; good and bad; Chess moves with pawns sacrificed. The House passed a health care bill that, among other things, ended exemption of insurers from the anti-trust laws. It also put a heavy freeze on abortion funding and clutched at the hearts of women across this country in an amendment not acceptable to either the nation or the times; Obama wants it stripped out but he’s continuing to keep hands off. Barbara Boxer, who can tug on Superman’s cape and spit into the wind with ease, says the Senate has the votes to stop it. It had better.

Many of the Blue Dogs voted against the bill, including my elderly and powerful Rep. Ike Skelton. Insult to injury, he also … needlessly, since he did not plan to support … voted FOR the Stupak Amendment that was assault on women’s reproductive freedom. He faces some challenge this election year; and he just pissed me and my Progressive friends off big time. I wrote him and told him we were parting ways now, not to depend on my activism on his behalf. There have been heavy Pub target ads in this area, giving his number to call and bully — if he’s going to get re-elected, he’s going to have to count on them. Here, in Blunt country, the Blue Dogs go along while the handful of Progressives keep the drum beating. It’s going to be a quiet election year for Mr. Skelton, it appears.

Like my friend Fishin’ Jim sez, this is a slippery slope. If a special interest group (ProLife) can hijack a national reform bill we’re in trouble. They don’t want their taxes used for abortion — but I DO want mine used for the full array of women’s health issues and family planning. And who WON the damn election, anyway!!!

The meme that Obama must get healthcare passed before the re-election crunch after the holidays paints with a big brush … but I’m not so sure, astrologically, it’s in the cards. Spring gives him another window of opportunity. If this agregious Stupak non-sense can’t be crushed, I’m willing to take my chances in later months. A ‘new way’ ahead means the end of old meme’s and political axiom’s — and can’t come soon enough to please me.

Our Prez is a statesman, that rarest of political animals — that means You and Me, we’ve got to do our part to be citizen activists, make our wishes very clear and impact local government as well as national. After years of making a difference and pulling the country toward progressive choices, this is no time to relax. In fact, it’s the very time when our voices will get the attention we were denied for eight years. Get on it, citizen — check your Rep’s vote… thank or censure … and get in touch with your Senator so they know your vote is the price of theirs. Kill Stupak for the anachronistic BS it is.

Bonus includes three Big Picture reads, worth your time. Although on different topics, they’re a natural progression of articles, first one defining political style, second one giving us a Very Sad look at our national situation and the third … in honor of Veteran’s Day … one that defines patriotism as opposed to nationalism from an enlightened military mind. They’re all of a piece because, clearly, the answer to the problems they pose are of a piece — love for our country, as defined by both public lives and personal ones, requires our dedication and service if we are to all benefit. Only we can change anything — and that begins with Truthtelling, taking responsibility and being the change we seek.

Have a mindful Vet’s Day and I’ll be back later in the week. Oh, and … as if I haven’t warned you a zillion times … look out for elephants!

Jude

Harper’s Weekly Review

The House of Representatives passed, by a vote of 220 to
215, a $1.1 trillion health-care bill that requires
employers to provide insurance coverage or face a tax
penalty, expands Medicaid coverage, establishes a
government-run insurance plan, and blocks the use of
federal insurance subsidies for abortions. “A lot of Blue
Dogs in this country,” said Republican National Committee
Chair Michael Steele, “are going to have a lot of
’splaining to do.” Protesters outside the Capitol chanted
“Kill the bill,” and fat activists voiced concerns about
the bill’s “weight-loss agenda.” Republicans were voted in
as governors in Virginia and New Jersey but lost one House
seat in New York. “The Republican renaissance has begun!”
said Steele. “If you don’t think last night was sweet, you
need to go see a doctor!” Voters in Maine blocked same-sex
marriage. “We all know we were the little guy going up
against the big guy,” said Marc Mutty of the Roman
Catholic Diocese of Portland, “but we prevailed.” After
forcing legislation to end term limits and spending $90
million of his personal fortune–fourteen times the budget
of his Democratic opponent–Michael Bloomberg won a third
term as mayor of New York. Without term limits, said
former president Bill Clinton, “I would have stayed until
I was carried away in a coffin. Or defeated in an
election.” A woman in South Korea passed her driving test
on the 950th try.

The Department of Labor announced that more than one in
ten Americans are now officially unemployed, with the
figure rising to one in six if the underemployed are
included. The FBI searched for a serial “granddad bandit”
who has robbed nine banks since April; police recovered
over 1,000 pieces of luggage stolen from a Phoenix
airport; and Los Angeles customs agents recovered a 1965
VW bus stolen from a dealership in Spokane, Washington, in
1975. Fannie Mae asked for another $15 billion in aid from
the federal government, and AIG posted a quarterly profit
of $92 million. The value of the virtual goods market
(such as “gifts” on Facebook and costumes for avatars) was
estimated at $5 billion. “The marginal cost for every one
you sell is zero,” said one Silicon Valley venture
capitalist. “So you have 100 percent margins.” A
laser-beam-powered robot ascended a half-mile cable
dangling from a helicopter to win $2 million. A Japanese
firm designed spectacles that can project translations
onto the wearer’s retinas, and a graduate student in
California unveiled a hat that pokes you in the head if
you don’t smile. A study found that children who receive
tough love are more likely to be successful, and an
11-year-old Bulgarian girl gave birth on her wedding
day. “I’m not going to play with toys any more,” she
said. “I have a new toy now.”

An army psychiatrist, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, upset that
he was about to be deployed to Iraq, killed 12 people and
wounded 31 at the Fort Hood, Texas, military base before
he was shot and subdued by police. Jason Rodriguez, an
unemployed man in Florida, entered the engineering firm
where he used to work and shot six people, killing one,
then drove to his mother’s house, where he was
arrested. “I’m just going through a tough time right now,”
he told a police officer. “I’m sorry.” A bear in Kashmir
killed two militant separatists who were hiding in his
den, and Dolores, Bianca, and Lolita, three bears at a
German zoo, went bald. A couple in Oklahoma City, driving
home from church, narrowly missed hitting an elephant that
had escaped from the circus. “At the very last second,”
related the driver, “I said, ‘Elephant!’” A man in Wales
was jailed for using cameras hidden in smoke detectors to
spy on the people who rented his cottage, and a shop
assistant at a Christian bookstore in California was
arrested for placing a hidden camera in the bookstore
bathroom. A bricklayer in Brazil, mistaken for the victim
of a car crash, attended his own funeral. Seven members of
the endangered Amazonian Yanomami tribe died of swine flu,
and British archeologists said that excessive logging of
the Peruvian hurango tree probably caused the collapse of
the Nazca society 1,500 years ago. Anthropologist and
philosopher Claude Levi-Strauss died at age 100. “The
world began without the human race,” he once wrote, “and
will certainly end without it.”

– Genevieve Smith
http://harpers.org/archive/2009/11/WeeklyReview2009-11-10

Boxer: Senate Has Votes To Block Stupak Amendment
Sam Stein, comments by Ryan Grim, HuffPo
11-10-09

One of Congress’s foremost champions of abortion rights said on Monday that the Senate did not have the votes to add a more restrictive anti-abortion amendment to health care reform legislation.

Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said that 60 votes would be needed to strip the current health care bill of its abortion-related language and replace it with a version resembling that passed by the House of Representatives on Saturday. And, in an interview with the Huffington Post, the California Democrat predicted that pro-choice forces in the Senate would keep that from happening.

“If someone wants to offer this very radical amendment, which would really tear apart [a decades-long] compromise, then I think at that point they would need to have 60 votes to do it,” Boxer said. “And I believe in our Senate we can hold it.”

“It is a much more pro-choice Senate than it has been in a long time,” she added. “And it is much more pro-choice than the House.”

Boxer’s reading of the political landscape might seem like the hopeful spin of an abortion-rights defender. But it was seconded by a far less pro-choice lawmaker, Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.)

“It would have to be added,” sad the Montana Democrat of an amendment that mirrored that offered Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) in the House. “I doubt it could pass.”

Speaking days after House Democrats helped pass the Stupak provision — which would greatly restrict private insurers from covering abortion — Boxer and Baucus’s proclamations are undoubtedly music to the ears of pro-choice activists. President Obama, likewise, stressed during an interview with ABC News Monday night that he would like to see the Stupak amendment changed before a final version of health care legislation is produced.

In making her argument, Boxer described the provision as inherently prejudiced, as well as bad policy and unfair politics. The Stupak amendment, she said, would deny women access to “a legal medical procedure” even if she agrees to pay for it with private funds (a supplemental policy would have to be purchased to cover abortion).

“It’s bad enough on the first count, but on the second count it seems to me very unfair and very discriminatory,” she said. “I don’t see them picking out anything that a man relies on, any kind of procedure that a man relies on. This is very discriminatory towards women.”

She noted that it was predominantly men who were making these policy decisions.

“In all my years in politics, this is what it’s been like,” Boxer said. “This is the way it is. It always amazes me. The leading voices always, since I’ve been in Congress, have always been males. And that is one of the reasons why I think it is so important to have more women. Not that every woman is pro-choice. It is not true. But most of the women are.”

“And so when I see man after man come down there I just feel, in my heart our of hearts: Why don’t you trust women to make this decision? We are deserving of your trust,” the senator added.

Currently, the Senate bill’s language would allow for insurers participating in a health care exchange to cover abortions so long as they ensured that federal funds are not used to pay for the procedure. An amendment similar to Stupaks’ effort — which was offered by Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) — had already been voted down in the Senate Finance Committee.

To re-introduce such a provision, Boxer said, 60 senators would be required to cut off debate on the floor. And the votes for that, she said, likely won’t materialize.

“If they try to add the language we would try to stop them,” she said. “If somebody wants to take it out they are going to need 60 votes to take it out… And my view is that we do have the numbers.”

Boxer is slated to meet on Tuesday with Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) as well as other Democratic women in the Senate to discuss the topic of abortion vis-à-vis health care reform.

“When we sat down to do health care, I thought there was an understanding that we would be abortion-neutral,” she said. “In other words we wouldn’t change anything on abortion; that federal funds couldn’t be used but of course private funds could as long as this was legal. And Roe v. Wade is the law of the land.” ++

Why the Stupak Amendment Is a Monumental Setback for Abortion Access
Jessica Arons, Director of the Women’s Health and Rights Program at American Progress - HuffPo

If you thought that just because abortion is a constitutional right and part of basic rproductive health care it would be available in the reformed health insurance market known as the Exchange, think again. The Stupak Amendment, passed Saturday night by the House of Representatives after a compromise deal fell apart, potentially goes farther than any other federal law to restrict women’s access to abortion.

The claim that it only bars federal funding for abortions is simply false. Here’s what the Stupak Amendment does:

1. It effectively bans coverage for most abortions from all public and private health plans in the Exchange: In addition to prohibiting direct government funding for abortion, it also prohibits public money from being spent on any plan that covers abortion even if paid for entirely with private premiums. Therefore, no plan that covers abortion services can operate in the Exchange unless its subscribers can afford to pay 100% of their premiums with no assistance from government “affordability credits.” As the vast majority of Americans in the Exchange will need to use some of these credits, it is highly unlikely any plan will want to offer abortion coverage (unless they decide to use it as a convenient proxy to discriminate against low- and moderate-income Americans who tend to have more health care needs and incur higher costs).

2. It includes only extremely narrow exceptions: Plans in the Exchange can only cover abortions in the case of rape or incest or “where a woman suffers from a physical disorder, physical injury, or physical illness that would, as certified by a physician, place the woman in danger of death.” Given insurance companies’ dexterity in denying claims, we can predict what they’ll do with that language. Cases that are excluded: where the health but not the life of the woman is threatened by the pregnancy, severe fetal abnormalities, mental illness or anguish that will lead to suicide or self-harm, and the numerous other reasons women need to have an abortion.

3. It allows for a useless abortion “rider”: Stupak and his allies claim his Amendment doesn’t ban abortion from the Exchange because it allows plans to offer and women to purchase extra, stand-alone insurance known as a rider to cover abortion services. Hopefully the irony of this is immediately apparent: Stupak wants women to plan for a completely unexpected event.

4. It allows for discrimination against abortion providers: Previously, the health care bill included an evenhanded provision that prohibited discrimination against any health care provider or facility “because of its willingness or unwillingness to provide, pay for, provide coverage of, or refer for abortions.” Now, it only protects those who are unwilling to provide such services.

One in three women will have an abortion in their lifetime. Eighty-seven percent of employer plans offer abortion coverage. None of that will matter if the Senate takes its cues from the House. In every other way, this bill will expand access to health care. But for millions of women, they are about to lose coverage they currently have and often need. ++

The Price of Health Reform: Abortion Rights?
Why Bart Stupak’s last-minute amendment to the health care bill is even more radical than you think.
Rachel Morris, Mother Jones
November 9, 2009

Will health care reform come at the expense of abortion rights? The Democrats’ historic health care bill squeaked through the House on Saturday only after pro-life forces scored a major victory. Despite months of wrangling over the public option and the price tag, in the end the legislation’s fate turned on an eleventh-hour push by conservative Democrats to broaden the bill’s existing limits on government funding of abortion, in the form of an amendment authored by Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.). Here’s what happened and what it means:

The Stupak amendment mandates that no federal funds can be used to pay for an abortion or “cover any part of any health plan” that includes coverage of an abortion, except in cases where the mother’s life is in danger or the pregnancy was the result of rape or incest.

The first part of the amendment isn’t new. The 1976 Hyde Amendment already prevents the use of federal dollars to pay for most abortions. Where pro-lifers won big was on the second part, which could significantly limit the availability of private insurance plans that cover the procedure.

That’s because Stupak’s amendment doesn’t just apply to the public option-the lower-cost plan to be offered by the government. The House health care bill will also provide subsidies to help people and small businesses purchase plans on an exchange. This represents a lucrative new market for insurers: anyone earning less than $88,000 for a family of four qualifies for assistance, as well as certain small companies. But to gain access to these new customers, insurers will have to drop abortion coverage from their plans.

Around 87 percent of plans cover abortion (though not all employers choose to actually include it). But under the House bill, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that 21 million people will participate in the exchanges by 2019 and that 18 million of them will do so via government subsidies. In theory, insurers could create separate plans for women who don’t qualify for credits but still want to buy a plan on the exchange. In reality, this is unlikely to happen, meaning that even women who purchase plans entirely with their own money in the new market may be unable to obtain one that offers abortion coverage.

Over time, the goal is for many more people to join the exchanges-the bigger they are, the more effective they’ll be. Not only will this put greater numbers of women in the same bind, it could affect abortion coverage in private plans outside the exchanges, too. “How big will exchanges have to be in an insurer’s business model before they decide it’s easier to standardize their coverage?” said Adam Sonfield, senior public policy associate of the Guttmacher Institute, a policy and research organization that focuses on reproductive health.

The Stupak amendment says that women are free to buy an optional rider to their plans that would cover abortion, as long as no money appropriated by the bill is used to pay for it. Critics call this ridiculous. People don’t think they’ll need coverage for most medical procedures until the day they actually need it; as detractors of the amendment have pointed out, no one plans for an unplanned pregnancy. Imagine if all insurance plans worked like a smorgasbord, in which you tried to guess the operations and medicines you might require sometime in the future. How many procedures would you actually fork out for in advance? Five states already have similar “rider” laws in place, but according to Sonfield, “No one seems to have come up with evidence that these plans are ever sold.”

Proponents of the Stupak amendment insisted that they were simply making sure that health care reform complied with the Hyde Amendment. But by constricting private coverage for abortions, they expanded Hyde’s reach. And Stupak’s sweeping measure was hardly the only option on the table. Until around 8 p.m. on the day before the vote, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tried to marshal her caucus around an amendment offered by Rep. Lois Capps (D-Calif.), which would have allowed women to isolate their federal subsidies in a separate account and pay for abortions out of their premiums instead. But that compromise fell through after a vigorous lobbying push by the Conference of Catholic Bishops, which instructed priests around the country to raise the issue in their churches. In the end, the Stupak amendment passed 240-194, with 64 Democrats voting in support. (Twenty-three of those Democrats ultimately voted against the health care bill.)

There are two big questions as the health care reform fight moves to the Senate. First, will the Senate mimic Stupak? So far, its leading proposal contains no equivalent provision, but abortion foes, emboldened by their biggest triumph in years, are sure to push for one.

Second, if a bill passes the Senate, will the Stupak amendment be stripped out in subsequent House-Senate negotiations? House Democrats’ chief deputy whip, Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.), has reportedly collected signatures from 41 Democrats vowing to oppose the final bill if the Stupak provision remains in. That’s enough to prevent legislation from passing. But 41 Democrats supported both the Stupak amendment and health care reform, which is also enough to block the legislation if all of them decided abortion financing was a deal-breaker.

Following the House vote, the White House declined to condemn or support the anti-abortion provision. There’s no way to predict what will come next in this high-stakes legislative tussle, but one thing is clear: in the push to provide access to health care for all Americans, abortion is now the official political football. ++

bonus

Politicians, Public Servant’s and Statesmen
Gary Hart, HuffPo
November 9, 2009

Political journalists, especially, tend to describe all elected officials as “politicians.” That is not necessarily incorrect. They operate in the political sphere, engage in political discourse, and attempt to achieve, or block, certain political objectives. But the word also is an opprobrium, connoting a scheming, self-interested, possibly corrupt, somewhat untrustworthy scoundrel. A politician is always up to something he or she doesn’t want us to know about.

Occasionally, an elected official acts against self-interest: that is to say, takes a position or casts a vote that is not popular and that jeopardizes re-election. That man or woman doesn’t fit the politician stereotype. Such behavior is rare enough and surprising enough that we describe it as a “profile in courage” or even ask — as Metternich did upon the sudden death of the Russian minister on the eve of the Council of Vienna (I think) — What could have been his motive?

By an act against self-interest, or by voluntary retirement from office (not defeat) or by simply taking the long-term national interest into account, an elected official may suddenly become a public servant. That seems to be the key: what is in the nation’s interest, not what is in the interest of my political career. There are public servants at all levels of our politics. They sometimes seem rare enough to be almost extinct. But we look for them at election time and we often vote for a new face in the hope that individual will turn out to be a public servant not a careerist politician.

Rarer still are statesmen (and I use this term for both genders). They are public servants with two additional qualities: an international view and a long view. Circumstances now require many, if not most, members of Congress to know at least something about the world in which we live, though an amazing number do not hold passports or desire to see that world. Mostly missing is the long view, the sense of history that enables the states-person to put an immediate crisis or challenge into context, to apply the lessons of history to the current problem. We all know Santayana’s famous dictum: those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it. No one since has been able to improve on that judgment.

The qualities of statesmanship, judgment, wisdom, and the long view are so rare as to seem almost non-existent these days. Statesmen there are, but they seem not to want to penetrate the political thicket necessary to serve. We better start finding some and clearing some of that thicket soon. ++

Development: US fails to measure up on ‘human index’
· Nation slumps from 2nd to 12th in global table
· Richest fifth take home $168,000, poorest $11,000
Ashley Seager, The Guardian
Thursday 17 July 2008

Despite spending $230m (£115m) an hour on healthcare, Americans live shorter lives than citizens of almost every other developed country. And while it has the second-highest income per head in the world, the United States ranks 42nd in terms of life expectancy.

These are some of the startling conclusions from a major new report which attempts to explain why the world’s number-one economy has slipped to 12th place - from 2nd in 1990- in terms of human development.The American Human Development Report, which applies rankings of health, education and income to the US, paints a surprising picture of a country that spends well over $5bn each day on healthcare - more per person than any other country.

The report, Measure of America, was funded by Oxfam America, the Conrad Hilton Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation. It shows each of the 11 countries that rank higher than the US in human development has a lower per-capita income.

Those countries score better on the health and knowledge indices that make up the overall human development index (HDI), which is calculated each year by the United Nations Development Programme.

And each has achieved better outcomes in areas such as infant mortality and longevity, with less spending per head.

Japanese, for example, can expect to outlive Americans, on average, by more than four years. In fact, citizens of Israel, Greece, Singapore, Costa Rica, South Korea and every western European and Nordic country save one can expect to live longer than Americans.

There are also wider differences, the report shows. The average Asian woman, for example, lives for almost 89 years, while African-American women live until 76. For men of the same groups, the difference is 14 years.

One of the main problems faced by the US, says the report, is that one in six Americans, or about 47 million people, are not covered by health insurance and so have limited access to healthcare.

As a result, the US is ranked 42nd in global life expectancy and 34th in terms of infants surviving to age one. The US infant mortality rate is on a par with that of Croatia, Cuba, Estonia and Poland. If the US could match top-ranked Sweden, about 20,000 more American babies a year would live to their first birthday.

“Human development is concerned with what I take to be the basic development idea: namely, advancing the richness of human life, rather than the richness of the economy in which human beings live, which is only a part of it,” said the Nobel laureate economist Amartya Sen, who developed the HDI in 1990.

“We get in this report … an evaluation of what the limitations of human development are in the US but also … how the relative place of America has been slipping in comparison with other countries over recent years.”

The US has a higher percentage of children living in poverty than any of the world’s richest countries.

In fact, the report shows that 15% of American children - 10.7 million - live in families with incomes of less than $1,500 per month.

It also reveals 14% of the population - some 40 million Americans - lack the literacy skills to perform simple, everyday tasks such as understanding newspaper articles and instruction manuals.

And while in much of Europe, Canada, Japan and Russia, levels of enrolment of three and four-year-olds in pre-school are running at about 75%, in the US it is little more than 50%.

The report not only highlights the differences between the US and other countries, it also picks up on the huge discrepancies between states, the country’s 436 congressional districts and between ethnic groups.

“The Measure of America reveals huge gaps among some groups in our country to access opportunity and reach their potential,” said the report’s co-author, Sarah Burd-Sharps. “Some Americans are living anywhere from 30 to 50 years behind others when it comes to issues we all care about: health, education and standard of living.

“For example, the state human development index shows that people in last-ranked Mississippi are living 30 years behind those in first-ranked Connecticut.”

Inequality remains stark. The richest fifth of Americans earn on average $168,170 a year, almost 15 times the average of the lowest fifth, who make do with $11,352.

The US is far behind many other countries in the support given to working families, particularly in terms of family leave, sick leave and childcare. The country has no federally mandated maternity leave.

The US also ranks first among the 30 rich countries of the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development in terms of the number of people in prison, both in absolute terms and as a percentage of the total population.

It has 5% of the world’s people but 24% of its prisoners. ++

How Patriotism Can Save America
Capt. Paul K. Chappell, US Army, t r u t h o u t
Friday 06 November 2009

“To overcome the injustice that still persists, patriotism is a labor of love that requires us to question our government and think critically.”

As a soldier in the United States Army, I have often pondered what it means to be patriotic, what it means to serve our country and what it means to love America. In “Will War Ever End?” I described a dangerous misconception of patriotism that I witnessed while deployed in Baghdad.

When I was deployed in Iraq and had a chance to watch American news channels, I heard commentators say that if we question or criticize our government, we do not love America and are being unpatriotic. They believed that patriotism meant waving a flag and being blindly obedient, but this is not what it means to love our country.

What does it mean to truly love our country? We can better understand love of country by realizing what it means to love a child. Parents who love their children will try to correct a child caught stealing, abusing people or being dishonest. For parents who do not truly love their children, apathy will cause them not to care, enabling their children to get away with anything. In this same way, if we love our country we will do our best to improve it. We will try to make America a better place for everyone, as courageous citizens have always done.

Since our country’s founding, brave patriots have worked to give us the many freedoms we enjoy today. Although I am part African-American and part Asian, I had the opportunity to graduate from West Point and I have the freedom to write these words, because patriotic Americans loved their country, and were therefore willing to improve it.

These liberties were not achieved overnight. Two hundred years ago in America, anyone who was not a white male landowner suffered oppression. During this era, the majority of people lacked the right to vote, and many Americans lived as slaves. Our country is much more humane today than it was then. This happened because courageous citizens such as Martin Luther King Jr., Mark Twain, Helen Keller, Susan B. Anthony, Woody Guthrie, Smedley Butler, Henry David Thoreau and many others struggled to make our country a better place for all people.

Because of the countless responsible Americans who loved and were therefore willing to question, constructively criticize and improve their country, America has made a lot of progress. When my father was drafted into the Army as an African-American in 1949, the military was segregated because the government upheld an official policy that viewed African-Americans as inferior and subhuman. Fifty years before then, the government would not allow women to vote, and only fifty years prior to that, the government supported and protected slavery.

To overcome the injustice that still persists, patriotism is a labor of love that requires us to question our government and think critically so that America can become a more humane and peaceful country for all of its citizens and a role model for the rest of the world. Although we have a long way to go before America truly becomes a symbol of justice and peace for the rest of the world, we have also journeyed a long way in this democratic experiment because of patriotic Americans who loved and constructively criticized their country.

Martin Luther King Jr. said:

Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken: the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered…. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth…. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: “This way of settling differences is not just.”

This form of national progress is necessary for our country’s survival, and it requires us to pursue the truth. The truth can hurt sometimes, but we must keep in mind that discomfort is not always a bad thing. For example, lifting weights at the gym, running and other forms of physical exercise are uncomfortable. But this discomfort is necessary to make us healthy and strong. In this same way, a change in our country’s moral perception of war, economic inequality and environmental destruction can also be uncomfortable, but this discomfort is necessary to make us healthy and strong as a nation.

In the past two hundred years, we have seen a change in our country’s moral perception of slavery, the oppression of women and racial segregation. As a result, our country is much healthier today than the America that drafted my father into a segregated Army, the America that would not allow women to vote, the America that supported slavery and the America that oppressed all people except white male landowners.

With the survival of our planet now at stake, our country needs patriotic Americans to question, think critically and continue to pioneer this democratic experiment. Now more than ever, our country needs us to help it become a beacon of hope that exports peace instead of war. Only patriotism, not blind obedience or flag waving, can make America healthy and strong. Only patriotism can save America from itself. ++

Capt. Paul K. Chappell is currently serving in the Army on active duty. He graduated from West Point in 2002 and he was deployed to Baghdad during 2006 and 2007. He is the author of “Will War Ever End?: A Soldier’s Vision of Peace for the 21st Century” and the upcoming book, “The End of War: New Ideas for Achieving World Peace. His Web site is www.willwareverend.com.

“I’m asking you to believe. Not just in my ability to bring about real change in Washington … I’m asking you to believe in yours.”
~ Barack Obama

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

Entry Filed under: Political Waves