Patriotism and Shit

From the OED, here are some of the listings uder the word 'patriot'-

a person devoted to his or her country; a person (claiming to be) ready to support or defend his or her country's freedom and rights; a member of a RESISTANCE MOVEMENT (my caps) or patriotic front

From dictionary.com-

a person who regards himself or herself as a defender, esp. of individual rights, against presumed INTERFERENCE (my caps) by the federal government

Of the many vague words that get tossed around the political arena, these are the most offensive (not that the words offend me, but that the words are so misused and often people either cannot define them, or everyone has a different definition of the word): 1.) patriotism, 2.) fascism, 3.) communism, 4.) freedom, 5.) terrorism, 5.) zionism and 6.) individual rights.

I'm not starting in on a political rant. Just something to think about. Bill O'Reilly and people like that can easily rub me the wrong way. However, so can left-wing extremists. I'm close to being as left wing as you get. (I support science, I'm borderline atheist AND borderline socialist, I like the gays the ladies the blacks and the Muslims, I'm super-pro-environment, I like the arts, and I don't buy into the culture of fear.) The reason the far-lefters tend to annoy me is that they don't sound very smart when they speak. I mean, if you are so obviously biased that you will not listen to the other side of an argument, then you are sort of a hypocrite. It's like these far-lefters I hear are making a bad name for educated and reasonable liberal thinkers, just like the far-right thinkers make a bad name for educated and reasonable conservatives. On normal news shows, like Jim Lehrer or some other PBS outfit, there will usually be some sort of conservative interviewed for an opinion. They pick the smart ones, you know, that really chose to believe what they believe for specific reasons grounded in education and being well-informed. When I start to listen to the far-far-lefters, when they sound so angry and divisive and reactionary, it's like they are being played. They are being played and they don't even know it.

It's very hard to listen to someone, like Bill O'Reilly, throw around a word like fascist (about liberals). For one, I'm guessing he never read George Orwell's essay, "Politics and the English Language." Or maybe he did, and he suspects his viewers never did, which they probably did not, thus he can get away with misusing the word. I mean the word is amost meaningless, just like the word 'freedom'; one is an appeal to fear and one is an appeal to emotion (both logical fallacies). Did you forget the logical fallacies class from college? (If you never had that one or didn't finish or never started college you can easily google 'logical fallacies' and find a list of fallacies that people, knowingly or unknowingly, employ in their rhetoric.

I guess my point is this: sometimes liberals get into trouble when they let the fanatical right stir up too many emotions. They want to fight back, they want to yell and pout and prove their point and be right. But the best way to prove that you're right is perhaps to disprove the arguments of the other side, subtley and with ease and confidence. It's so easy to deconstruct someone else's arguement once you see the holes in it. However, if youre talking to a super-smart republican, there may be no holes in her argument, perhaps just something to learn.