Mandatory Patriotism Is Always A Bad Idea

Mandatory patriotism is never a good idea. This sign I passed today announces that school children in the district where I pay property taxes to support education were not in classes learning to read, write or think mathematically on Tuesday at 1:30pm. Instead, they were being told to thank veterans while listening to feeble-minded platitudes such as “they gave us our freedom.”

A poor substitute for actually studying our Constitution, the Bill of Rights or the Magna Carta.

This year November 10 was the day prior to what used to be Armistice Day, marking the ceasefire negotiated on the 11^th hour of the 11^th day of the 11^th month, ending European combat and, ultimately, World War I. My father’s father was wounded on that day and it was a long time before he made it home again, his health permanently broken. He told his only son, “Don’t believe them when they tell you the next war is a good one. There is no such thing.”

When I reflect on what I studied as a history major and continue to study as a teacher of history, enforced patriotism at the taxpayers’ expense targeting children who have not yet attained the age of reason makes me feel like weeping. It’s nearly always practiced by aggressive, warrior nation-states and it nearly always ends badly.

Shutting down critical thinking by silencing questioners and dissenters by mandatory displays of chauvinism is a recipe for a dumb populace easily enlisted as cannon fodder.

I stayed at a friend’s house last night and she told me of her friend whose son had refused, in around 2006, to stand for the pledge of allegiance in homeroom. He was threatened with suspension eventually and when his mother protested she was told that the mandatory pledge of allegiance was “school policy.” She didn’t think that school policy trumped the 1^st amendment, and she took the case all the way to the superintendent and the school board. They agreed with her, but meanwhile the football coach had told the boy that if he didn’t stand for the pledge he was off the team. The boy knuckled under.

My friend said she was most appalled by the fact that no teachers in this public high school in a university town in the western mountains of Maine stood up for the boy’s rights. Only one teacher told the mother that he agreed the boy had the right not to stand, but said he didn’t dare speak openly about it for fear of losing his job. Everyone else was either mute or vocally agreed with the mandatory pledge of allegiance. By teenagers who had not even reached adulthood. In what sense is such a pledge even valid?

One of the arguments the boy had heard was that he was a hypocrite because he would sing the national anthem before football games. The student tried to argue that pledging allegiance to a nation was quite a different matter from singing a patriot song. I give him an A+ for critical thinking on that one.

#TPP Smokescreen Game On: Segment Of #KeystoneXL Pipeline Is Vetoed

The Pentagon always gets a pass from the corporate press when it comes to reporting on  what's causing climate chaos.
Not from Veterans for Peace, though -- they know a #PentagonClimateCrime when they see one.

The Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) treaty that Congress may vote up or vote down but in no way amend will be game over for the planet if passed. Much of what it would render de jure already exists de facto, but if implemented TPP would trump the sovereignty of nations and lay bare the fangs of corporate government. 

TPP would render the powers of Congress, the White House and the Supreme Court to regulate environmental protection null and void. TPP would criminalize dissent that can be demonstrated to interfere with a corporation's profits. 

Think fossil fuel divestment campaigns like the one being waged by students at my alma mater.

Chris Hedges reports that Ralph Nader is calling TPP "the most brazen corporate power grab in American history" -- and if you think about some of the brazen corporate power grabs in our short, brutal history that is saying something.

In case you do not have time to read and decipher the 5,000+ page document, here is Hedge's executive summary:

If there is no sustained popular uprising to prevent the passage of the TPP in Congress this spring we will be shackled by corporate power. 

Wages will decline. Working conditions will deteriorate. Unemployment will rise. Our few remaining rights will be revoked. The assault on the ecosystem will be accelerated. Banks and global speculation will be beyond oversight or control. Food safety standards and regulations will be jettisoned. Public services ranging from Medicare and Medicaid to the post office and public education will be abolished or dramatically slashed and taken over by for-profit corporations. Prices for basic commodities, including pharmaceuticals, will skyrocket. Social assistance programs will be drastically scaled back or terminated. And countries that have public health care systems, such as Canada and Australia, that are in the agreement will probably see their public health systems collapse under corporate assault. Corporations will be empowered to hold a wide variety of patents, including over plants and animals, turning basic necessities and the natural world into marketable products. And, just to make sure corporations extract every pound of flesh, any public law interpreted by corporations as impeding projected profit, even a law designed to protect the environment or consumers, will be subject to challenge in an entity called the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) section. The ISDS, bolstered and expanded under the TPP, will see corporations paid massive sums in compensation from offending governments for impeding their “right” to further swell their bank accounts. 

Corporate profit effectively will replace the common good.

Activists are converging on Washington DC this week to mount the popular uprising againt the TPP right in corporate lobbyists' faces. You can read details for DC or find actions near you here. Organizers are just as concerned about the two follow on treaties being negotiated in secret. 

From the Flush the TPP website:

The United States is negotiating three massive international treaties–the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the TransAtlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Trade-in-Services Agreement (TiSA)... 

The TPP, TTIP, & TiSA are much more than trade deals–only 5 of the 29 TPP chapters even deal with trade. They are corporate power grabs that impacts every aspect of our lives. 

If passed, the TPP, TTIP, & TiSA would take away environmental protections, offshore American jobs & decrease wages, remove food safety laws, curtail internet freedom, inhibit access to lifesaving medicine, spur further financial deregulation and more. Under Obama’s recent Fast Track bill these treaties  would even ban climate action and immigration reform.

But wait, what was the big news story about environmental protection in the corporate press this week? Right. President Obama vetoed building part of the Keystone XL pipeline. 

Ironically, the President's lame duck veto was likely in response to pressure mounted by the very activism that would become illegal under the TPP. Which he is a big cheerleader for.

I think my sister in PINK, long time environmental activist Janet Weil, framed it best:

What about all the OTHER pipelines?! What about shutting down the Canadian tar sands, PERIOD?! What about all the indigenous people who have died from cancer? What about all the hundreds of thousands, or maybe millions by now, of birds killed by tar sands extractions? The boreal forest? The many, many pipeline leaks? Will the Southern Leg of the #KXL be shut down now? How about some grief and humility along with the "celebration" and the calls for thanking Obama for doing something he should have done long, long ago?