Patriot Mug

I wanted to clear something up with the definitions of the word "patriot". It is commonly mistakenly identified with "love of country" or "blindly following" what the government says. While to some extent it does involve a profound love of one's country, the main marking of a Patriot is complete adherence to the ideas of the Constitution. Let me be clear, most Patriots are conservative, but there are many liberal Patriots as well. The Oath of Office or Enlistment to the Armed Forces is a commitment to uphold the Constitution and protect the nation "from all enemies, foreign and domestic". A Patriot recognizes that the threat to freedom and liberty does not discriminate and can even infect the elected representatives of the United States. It is a commitment to civil liberties and a promise to defend the land whether the protection being sought is from terrorists overseas, or the President in the White House, or the Congress in Washington. The main rights protected under the Bill of Rights and Constitution are free speech, freedom of assembly, suffrage for all men and women of age, the right to life, liberty, and property, right from illegal search and seizure, right to remain silent, freedom of the press, freedom of equality for ALL men and women, and in addition there are also fundamental rights of the accused, freedom of religion and freedom from religion, freedom from quartering soldiers, right to a jury trial, and the two biggest ones that make all this possible: the right to due process, and the right of habeas corpus. And the reason the majority of Patriots are conservative is because the one amendment that ensures and protects these rights is the Second Amendment. "A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." The Founding Fathers were not inbred hicks who wanted to go quail hunting or hurt animals like PETA tells you. The right to keep and bear arms and to form militias was put there because the Founding Fathers recognized that government was a necessary evil. The growing complacency of men results in a government with expanding authority and power that ultimately becomes tyranny. Unfortunately, most do not know the reason for the Second Amendment. It is not protection from terrorists overseas, or criminals at home... It is for protection from the government itself. Thomas Jefferson himself believed that we would see revolution in perpetuity and argued that it should be so, as he knew the government was a necessary evil that if not, at times, restrained, it would be the death of civil liberties as we know them. "God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. ... What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. " Patriotism is not allegiance to country, nor to political parties, nor to elected representatives. It is full devotion to the Constitution even if we must die for it, and any government who violates the rights laid out in that document has become the very terrorists they purportedly despise.