Recently a friend posed this question on Facebook: Question for you all: What does it mean to be a true American patriot? It made me uncomfortable. I countered: What would you say is the opposite of a true American patriot? I have such a hard time worth the word patriot because of how it has been poisoned by the Right. I have become so conflicted that I can’t even put it into words. So then I wondered what the opposite of patriot is. I suppose I was asking what qualities would indicate that someone was not patriotic. To be fair, that wasn’t the question they were asking. So, what is patriotism? Merriam Webster defines it as: love for or devotion to one's country. That’s it. Pretty simple, isn’t it? So, what is “American” patriotism? It depends on what you love and what aspects of this country you are devoted to, I guess. I came up with this answer: The simplest definition for me would be that an American patriot is someone who believes that life, ...
Where Columbia and Howard County Intersect