Is dissension patriotic?

BM

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When someone sees the leaders of a great nation causing harm to that nation then they would be unpatriotic NOT to dissent.

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Patriotism is love and devition of one's country, it has nothing to do with love or devotion to that country's leaders.

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Is dissension patriotic?

Yes.

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I suppose it would depend what the person is dissenting to and how they are going about it.

Blowing up a building full of people just because you don't like the way the most recent highway funding bill went isn't very patriotic.

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Quote:

Blowing up a building full of people just because you don't like the way the most recent highway funding bill went isn't very patriotic.

It wasn't just the highway bill...it was also the god dam children.

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" Dissent is the highest form of Patriotism" - Thomas Jefferson

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I thought we were talking about socially acceptable dissension, not mindless terrorism.

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fishin' wrote:

Blowing up a building full of people just because you don't like the way the most recent highway funding bill went isn't very patriotic.

nor very efficient, if you really wanted to make that point it should have been a bridge. Besides which that is not dissent, that's assault.

A studied skepticism of the powers that be is required in any healthy democracy but when those powers begin to act in a manner which is perceived to be harmful I would think it is the citizens duty to speak out forcefully. We are what anthropologists call an egocentric (individual oriented) society, and it is assumed that the individual not an institution such as a church or the military will respond

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Acquiunk wrote:

nor very efficient, if you really wanted to make that point it should have been a bridge. Besides which that is not dissent, that's assault.

The McVeigh's and members of the ALF would probably disagree with you but yeah. My point was simply that "dissent" can mean a lot of things to different people and not all of their actions would be considered patriotic.

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I think "socially acceptable dissention" is an oxymoron. Can you give an example?

The great dissenters of our history-- Martin Luther King, Henry David Thoreau, Rosa Parks, Susan B. Anthony.... could hardly be called "socially acceptable".

Dissenters by definition are reviled by a large part of society.

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ebrown_p wrote:

I think "socially acceptable dissention" is an oxymoron. Can you give an example?

There are people that stand on the National Mall or and in front of the White House every single day holding up placards expressing their dissent and editorial pages in every paper in the country contain op-ed pieces and letters to the editor expressing dissent.

I don't think any of those people or papers fall to the level of being reviled by anything close to a majority.

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Along this subject line, I just watched "The Yes Men" last night, which is about a group of gay guys who impersonate the WTO in an attempt to unveil it's immoral acts.

They start going to conferences of world leaders pretending to be WTO representatives, coming up with completely ridiculous speaches that promote slavery, feeding processed crap to feed 3rd world countries, etc...but instead of getting boo'd off stage, everyone just goes along with it...

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ebrown_p wrote:

I think "socially acceptable dissention" is an oxymoron. Can you give an example?

The great dissenters of our history-- Martin Luther King, Henry David Thoreau, Rosa Parks, Susan B. Anthony.... could hardly be called "socially acceptable".

Dissenters by definition are reviled by a large part of society.

How were the people you name acting in a manner not socially acceptable? As fishin' has already pointed out, the people who disagreed with ML King or any of the others you name may have been "a large part of society" (or, perhaps, not), but were certainly bnot a majority. The very people you name were rather lionized in the popular press, not reviled. Their non-violent, passive dissent was seen as not only socially acceptable, but laudable. Include Mohandas Ghandi in that list, also.

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Is dissension patriotic?

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