Excluding Outsiders Or Coming Together For The Common Good?
By Robert Reich, cross-posted from his website
Recently I publicly debated a regressive Republican
who said Arizona and every other state should use whatever means
necessary to keep out illegal immigrants. He also wants English to be
spoken in every classroom in the nation, and the pledge of allegiance
recited every morning. “We have to preserve and protect America,” he
said. “That’s the meaning of patriotism.”
To my debating partner and other regressives,
patriotism is about securing the nation from outsiders eager to overrun
us. That’s why they also want to restore every dollar of the $500
billion in defense cuts scheduled to start in January.
Yet many of these same regressives have no interest
in preserving or protecting our system of government. To the contrary,
they show every sign of wanting to be rid of it.
In fact, regressives in Congress have substituted partisanship for patriotism, placing party loyalty above loyalty to America.
The GOP’s highest-ranking member of Congress has
said his “number one aim” is to unseat President Obama. For more than
three years congressional Republicans have marched in lockstep,
determined to do just that. They have brooked no compromise.
They couldn’t care less if they mangle our
government in pursuit of their partisan aims. Senate Republicans have
used the filibuster more frequently in this Congress than in any
congress in history.
House Republicans have been willing to shut down
the government and even risk the full faith and credit of the United
States in order to get their way.
Regressives on the Supreme Court have opened the
floodgates to unlimited money from billionaires and corporations
overwhelming our democracy, on the bizarre theory that money is speech
under the First Amendment and corporations are people.
Regressive Republicans in Congress won’t even support legislation requiring the sources of this money-gusher be disclosed.
They’ve even signed a pledge – not of allegiance to
the United States, but of allegiance to Grover Norquist, who has never
been elected by anyone. Norquist’s “no-tax” pledge is interpreted only
by Norquist, who says closing a tax loophole is tantamount to raising
taxes and therefore violates the pledge.
True patriots don’t hate the government of the
United States. They’re proud of it. Generations of Americans have risked
their lives to preserve it. They may not like everything it does, and
they justifiably worry when special interests gain too much power over
it. But true patriots work to improve the U.S. government, not destroy
it.
But regressive Republicans loathe the government –
and are doing everything they can to paralyze it, starve it, and make
the public so cynical about it that it’s no longer capable of doing much
of anything. Tea Partiers are out to gut it entirely. Norquist says he
wants to shrink it down to a size it can be “drowned in a bathtub.”
When arguing against paying their fair share of
taxes, wealthy regressives claim “it’s my money.” But it’s their nation,
too. And unless they pay their share America can’t meet the basic needs
of our people. True patriotism means paying for America.
So when regressives talk about “preserving and
protecting” the nation, be warned: They mean securing our borders, not
securing our society. Within those borders, each of us is on our own.
They don’t want a government that actively works for all our citizens.
Their patriotism is not about coming together for
the common good. It is about excluding outsiders who they see as our
common adversaries.
Robert Reich is Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He writes a blog at www.robertreich.org. His most recent book is Beyond Outrage
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