“Love for or devotion to one’s country.” That’s the simple and short definition of “patriotism” found in Merriam-Webster’s dictionary. So, here’s my question, “is it possible to be devoted to one’s country and still want to leave it?” “To be a patriot of a country in which you don’t want to be a citizen?”
For many years, Americans have heard ‘conservative,’ usually Republican, statements about how they represent the “real America” and are our country’s great patriots. While in North Carolina during the 2008 Presidential election, then-vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin referred to small towns as “the real America” and “pro-America areas of this great nation.”
Tomorrow, the Steven Spielberg movie ‘Lincoln’ will open in theaters around the country. President Abraham Lincoln famously delivered the Gettysburg Address on the afternoon of November 19, 1863, at the dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. It was little over four months after the bloody Civil War battle of Gettysburg at which the union armies defeated those of the confederacy.
Of course, the American Civil War was fought over the issue of human rights and freedom for enslaved African-Americans. But, it was also fought to preserve the American union and to prevent the secession of the southern confederate states.
In his great speech, Lincoln emphasized the important cause to keep our country united so that “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” Roughly 625,000 Americans died in the fight over that prevented secession.
In the short weeks after the second term election of President Barack Obama, residents in every U.S. state have filed petitions with the federal government, each seeking secession for their state. Under the President’s “We the People” program, each petition passes the threshold needed to be reviewed, and to require a response from the White House, if at least 25,000 signatures are received within 30 days. Only the petitions filed for eight southern states appear to have reached that required threshold so far. Louisiana was the first. Not surprisingly, Texas has received the most signatures with more than 110,000. Those two states are joined by the same North Carolina where Sarah Palin made her speech about “pro-American areas,” Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee and Missouri.
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