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Politics : Foreign Affairs - No Political Rants -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sun Tzu who wrote (450)	3/9/2003 4:25:32 PM
From: Sun Tzu	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 504

PSEUDO-PATRIOTISM TRUMPS CORE AMERICAN VALUES Sat Mar 8,10:10 PM ET By Cynthia Tucker When President Bush (news - web sites) visited Atlanta in mid-February, suburban housewife Sally Rountree decided to take the opportunity to show her opposition to the probable invasion of Iraq (news - web sites). So she scribbled a homemade sign -- "No War for Oil" -- and found a place along the route of the presidential motorcade, hoping Bush would see her protest. As she tells it, she was never rude. She didn't shout. She didn't elbow other onlookers or jostle toward the front of the crowd. She merely stood holding her sign. Nevertheless, for the offense of exercising her rights as a citizen of one of the world's greatest democracies, she was spat on, threatened and yelled at. One man went so far as to denounce her for wearing a cross around her neck, "insinuating I was not a Christian," she said. As she wrote in an op-ed essay for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: "I was frightened that my neighbors were going to hurt me because I dared to express my opinion. This could not be happening. Not in America, right?" But it is happening here. Rountree is not the only dissenting voice to find that her fellow citizens have adopted a pinched and distorted pseudo-patriotism that manages to mangle the very democratic principles upon which the nation was founded -- including the freedom to freely criticize the president without fear of retribution. Around the country, anti-war dissenters have been threatened and harassed, even for the mildest protests. An Albany, N.Y., mall, for example, has apparently ejected some shoppers wearing peace slogans. Last week, a security guard approached Stephen Downs at the Crossgates Mall and asked him to remove the T-shirt he was wearing, emblazoned with the words "Peace on Earth" and "Give peace a chance." When Downs refused to remove the shirt or leave the mall, he was arrested for trespassing. (The charges were later dropped.) Three months ago, a group of activists wearing similar shirts were asked to leave the same mall, according to The Associated Press. So much for freedom of expression. There is layer upon layer of sad irony here. Even as President Bush denounces Saddam's tyranny and vows to plant the seeds of democracy in Iraq, Americans are trying to suppress their neighbors' right to express dissenting views -- one of the very pillars of American democracy. The citizens' right to criticize their leaders was so important to the Founding Fathers that they placed free speech in the First Amendment to the Constitution. You would think that President Bush would use his bully pulpit to remind Americans that they ought to be modeling the democratic values that we are trying to export. But the White House has already proved a disappointment along those lines. Back in October 2001, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer (news - web sites) didn't stop at disagreeing with satirist Bill Maher, who suggested the 9/11 terrorists were "not cowards" in their suicide. Instead, Fleischer snapped: "All Americans need to watch what they do, and this is not a time for remarks like that." Coming from the president's spokesman, it was a chilling suggestion of censorship. The oddest thing about this wave of pseudo-patriotism is that it serves as a substitute for genuine patriotism -- for a sense of shared sacrifice that would befit a proud nation threatened by hostile forces. Military recruiters report no upsurge in enlistment. And while one or two courageous voices have suggested a debate on a draft -- either for the military or for homeland security -- conscription is widely considered a political impossibility. Few politicians would dare suggest we make any real sacrifices in the service of our country. Instead, too many of us believe we have shown ourselves to be great patriots when we stick an American flag bumper sticker on the old SUV and run over the peace placards in our neighbor's yard. Perhaps we've forgotten what we're fighting to defend. Cynthia Tucker is editorial page editor for the Atlanta Constitution.