Dissent Is The Highest Form of Patriotism?

There it was—out for all to see on the bumper of a faculty automobile at Kennesaw State University.  No doubt intended as a statement of profound wisdom, it demonstrated little more than evidence of arrested intellectual development.

I first encountered this slogan when I was a high school student in Brooklyn, New York.  I then ran into it again as a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.  And here it was once more being used to justify a trendy political policy.

“Dissent Is the Highest Form of Patriotism.”  That is what the bumper sticker read.  Pithy, to the point, and ridiculously absurd, it can only be considered insightful by those who have not reflected on its implications.

Back in Brooklyn, it was meant to vindicate the socialist inclinations of a majority of my neighbors.  Out in Madison, it celebrated the anti-Viet Nam War sentiments of many demonstrators.  Today, it serves to endorse the treachery of a Bradley Manning or an Edward Snowden.

But let us take a step back.  Isn’t sacrificing one’s life in war a higher form of patriotism than stealing national secrets and posting them on the Internet?  Similarly, isn’t helping the poor or disabled live fulfilling lives more worthwhile than badmouthing our nation’s history?

Some dissent is surely noble.  I am reminded of a colleague who passed on a few years ago.  He served our country proudly battling the Nazis, then came home to march for racial integration in Atlanta when it was unfashionable for a white person to do so.

Are we to lump him together with the likes of Benedict Arnold or Julius and Ethyl Rosenberg?  Is becoming a turncoat and/or delivering atomic secrets to the Soviets supposed to rank up there with fighting for racial justice?

Dissent can be honorable, but it is not always honorable.  Dissent can also serve patriotic purposes, but it is not the only sort of behavior that serves patriotic purposes.  People who support what the United States stands for can also be patriots.  Indeed, some are more patriotic than the self-righteous dissenters.

What also about those who love our democracy and put themselves on the line to defend it?  What, for instance, about the ones who stood up to the IRS and condemned its discriminatory tactics as a violation the principles upon which our nation was founded?

Are we only to count those individuals as patriotic who persistently perceive Americans as racists and who never applaud the progress we have jointly made toward providing justice for all?  Surely we must be allowed to commend some of the good things we and our forebears have accomplished.

A bumper sticker mentality is only for those who do not wish to contemplate the complexities of this world.  These are the same folks who tell us “war never settled anything,” even though the American Revolution, the American Civil War, and World War II manifestly did.

Whether dissent is patriotic clearly depends upon what it is about and how it is implemented.  Thus, objecting to constitutional safeguards regarding free speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion does not rise to my idea of praiseworthy opposition.

Nor does divulging a host of national secrets, especially after one has taken an oath to defend them.  This is cowardly, anti-American, and decidedly not patriotic.  It ought, therefore, not be depicted as plucky whistleblowing.

Sadly, genuine patriotism seems to have gone into eclipse.  Among the cognoscenti it is actually derided as vulgar flag-waving.  Substituted instead are cynical diatribes concerning our alleged barbarism.  What is more, these gibes are held to be clever, compassionate, and “progressive.”

They are, in fact, nothing of the sort.  Manning, Snowden, and their ilk are merely vile worms pretending to be heroic paladins.  Were they the stuff upon which our nation must depend in order to maintain its greatness, we would be in serious trouble.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University