Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3639 in Books
• Published on: 2008-01-15
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 136 pages

Governor Howard Dean
The True Patriot makes a powerful argument that our heritage as a great nation is a progressive heritage, and it shows what each one of us can do to heal America and regain our position of moral leadership at home and abroad.

Andy Stern, President, Service Employees International Union and author, A Country That Works
A must read for progressives and conservatives alike. Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer return the definition of patriotism to the founders ideal and challenge all of us to put aside meaningless partisanship and rise up through sacrifice and innovation to face the practical realities of the 21st century.

George Lakoff, author of Don't Think of an Elephant
The True Patriot is an eloquent statement of the ideals on which our democracy was founded and which need to be revived by modern day patriots. Nick Hanauer and Eric Liu remind us that patriotism is not so much about waving a flag as it is about living those ideals.

Customer Reviews

Great ideas behind the book
I think the idea behind this book is a noble one. I commend them for being brave enough as progressive to claim patriotism. But there are some flaws in the idea behind this whole thing. First, Leftists, Liberals and progressives can not claim to be true patriots when majority of them view patriotism as a wrong idea. When most progressive activists undermine their own respective countries, be it the US or Canada, in the time of need. How can progressive claim they are truly in love with their countries when their peers keep playing the role of traitors and enemy enablers within our borders. Yes, it takes a few people like the authors of this short book to tell us that they are wrong, but these authors MUST correct the misdeeds and misbehavings of their own fellow progressives. All in all, this book is a fresh read.

An inconvenient vision
I know, "inconvenient" has become the cliche of the decade. But the vision that Liu and Hanauer express in The True Patriot is so obvious, rings so true, that it must be its "inconvenience" that makes a market niche for a book to present it. It is a little red book for those weary of cynical manipulations by the power brokers of both economic and intellectual persuasions.

Capitalsim and Love
The stated objective of this book is to explain that lefty, socialist progressives are really the true patriots at a time when most Americans are convinced that Republicans are the true patriots. The thesis is off and running with a little very twisted logic as follows: patriotism is, "country above self." This means,accordiing to the authors, that if you are a caring human being you will dutifully worship the state and cheerfully pay it higher and higher taxes in the belief that a caring, selfless, state monopoly can better spend your money than you can. It is a sentiment that would have made Karl Marx very proud.

Republicans, conversely, from Jefferson forward, believed that patriotism was about loving America because it was based on the principle of freedom from government. The American Revolution was fought for this freedom and after the Revolution there was indeed very little gov't to restrict freedom. Even after the Constitution was enacted the gov't remained extremely tiny. This is why, for example, modern Republican judges are strict constructionists, originalists, textualists, or conservatives. They want a small gov't like the one our Founders intended that enshrined the individual above the state. In America, freedom was not considered selfish.

Perhaps the second most important piece of twisted logic in the book has to do with the notion that American freedom is no dam good. The authors demonstrate this as follows: "we hear too much about freedom from gov't, taxes, and regulations and not enough about freedom to......" The idea here is that freedom is naturally selfish. The gov't must do good works because individuals or private groups, given their defective, selfish characters, surely won't. It is the exact opposite of the concept embodied by the American Revolution and Republicans.

The book is perfectly oblivious to the concept of a caring, loving, and gov't free capitalism and so can only imagine more and more taxation and gov't. It cannot consider that without the objective of securing a free lunch from the gov't, people will naturally revert to capitalism. This simply means that they don't get one penny or one free lunch until after they have produced something that others want to voluntarily buy. Everyone is encouraged to be a caring, loving, productive member of society who cares about their neighbors' needs, and addresses them. They are not encouraged to be looking for a free lunch that only gives rise to the need for yet another more sumptuous free lunch.

Is it really Patriotic to be ignorant to the point where you don't know that the sudden appearance of America, freedom, and capitalism did far more to end human misery than anything that came before or after? Is it really patriotic to be ignorant to the point where you don't know that most of the evil in human history was caused by gov'ts that were absolutely certain they were superior and doing the right thing?