"My obligation in life is more than to myself and more than to my family. I am a public citizen, and I am proud to be a public citizen.
That's what make me patriotic. How can you talk about being patriotic if you have no commitment to your fellow citizens? It's totally oxymoronic, it's a contradiction. If you are strictly a private citizen and you have no public relationship with other citizens, then what's the point of being an American? You can live on an atoll by yourself. I'm not living on an atoll, and this pernicious ideology and new religion of America which worships only money instead of God is morally and spiritually bankrupt. There is more to life than just dollars and cents. If you really love America, then you love Americans, and you feel a commitment, a moral obligation to other Americans. Some think tanks believe that any transaction that has merit is a transaction of dollars and cents, otherwise it is somehow invalid.
Transactions based on civic values are legitimate. Those are the most patriotic people, the people who have a sense of moral responsibility to other Americans without respect to their income, but simply because they're here. If you are truly a patriotic person then you cannot help but feel a moral and ethical responsibility to your fellow citizens. I believe in effect that many institutions, whether they claim to be private, such as corporations, or claim to be private, such as private citizens, many of these people really suck at the public table. We have heard too many stories of how corporations get private money for research and development and they reap the profits. And tell me what man is in fact " an island unto himself?" A surgeon who might boast of his being self sufficient and having been a self made man, did he go to a school building that he built himself? Did he read school books that he wrote himself? Did he eat food that he himself grew? It's a fiction, we are all dependent on each other. Wake up, that is the truth. And people who want to turn your mind around and persuade you on the basis of your
own selfishness that you have no responsibility to other people really in the end feel no responsibility to you. They don't care whether you live or die, as long as you can function to their own benefit. That's the way it works, and that's the truth."
(This is an e-mail I received from my sister Al during one of our discussions in January. It's not directed towards you or anyone else on this thread. Would welcome any comments- negative or positive.) |
