A Quote by Matthew Dowd

The highest form of patriotism is dissent. — © Matthew Dowd
The highest form of patriotism is dissent.

Quote Author

Matthew Dowd
Born: May 29, 1961
During President George W. Bush's two terms, you couldn't drive far without seeing a particular bumper sticker: Dissent is the highest form of patriotism. Now that Democrats control the White House and Congress, the left treats dissent as the lowest form of treason.
Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.
If what your country is doing seems to you practically and morally wrong, is dissent the highest form of patriotism?
Dissent is the highest form of patriotism, and I intend to continue to push my country to respect the rights of all its citizens. I will not be silenced.
During President George W. Bush's two terms, you couldn't drive far without seeing a particular bumper sticker: 'Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.'
Comedy as dissent or any art form as dissent is going to be our last safety valve.
There's a tradition in the history of dissent in authoritarian countries of a certain kind of dissident, and their form of dissent is to live their lives as normally as possible.
We must dissent from the indifference. We must dissent from the apathy. We must dissent from the fear, the hatred and the mistrust. We must dissent from a nation that has buried its head in the sand, waiting in vain for the needs of its poor, its elderly, and its sick to disappear and just blow away. We must dissent from a government that has left its young without jobs, education or hope. We must dissent from the poverty of vision and the absence of moral leadership. We must dissent because America can do better, because America has no choice but to do better.
There is Ontario patriotism, Quebec patriotism, or Western patriotism; each based on the hope that it may swallow up the others, but there is no Canadian patriotism, and we can have no Canadian nation when we have no Canadian patriotism.
It was in the 1960s that the left convinced itself that there is something fascistic about patriotism and something perversely "patriotic" about running down America. Anti-Americanism - a stand-in for hatred of Western civilization - became the stuff of sophisticates and intellectuals as never before. Flag burners became the truest "patriots" because dissent - not just from partisan politics, but the American project itself - became the highest virtue.
No matter that patriotism is too often the refuge of scoundrels. Dissent, rebellion, and all-around hell-raising remain the true duty of patriots.
To criticize one's country is to do it a service.... Criticism, in short, is more than a right; it is an act of patriotism-a higher form of patriotism, I believe, than the familiar rituals and national adulation.
The man form is higher than the angel form; of all forms it is the highest. Man is the highest being in creation, because he aspires to freedom.
Every fiction since Homer has taught friendship, patriotism, generosity, contempt of death. These are the highest virtues; and the fictions which taught them were therefore of the highest, though not of unmixed, utility.
Remember this, take this to heart, live by it, die for it if necessary: that our patriotism is medieval, outworn, obsolete; that the modern patriotism, the true patriotism, the only rational patriotism, is loyalty to the Nation ALL the time, loyalty to the Government when it deserves it.
Dissent and dissenters have no monopoly on freedom. They must tolerate opposition. They must accept dissent from their dissent.
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