Society

There's a interesting interview with Joe Trippi, former Dean campaign manager. He has a lot to say about collaboration, the power of the Internet, and how things are shifting from television to the 'net.

To many Americans, it seems that patriotism is the flag-waving unquestioning devotion to the United States and its armed forces. July 4th and Memorial Day bring out these sentiments everywhere, and we are constantly reminded to be patriotic, support our troops, to pledge allegiance to our government above all else, and remember those in the armed forces that died for our freedom.

Many "patriotic" people get mad at those that point out that the United States has never, in its entire history, lived up to those words in the pledge: "with liberty and justice for all." In fact, when the pledge was written in 1892, slavery was not yet a distant memory. Segregation and racial discrimination were still the norm. White juries, especially in the south, sentenced black men to death on the flimsiest of evidence, while exonorating white lynchers that were clearly guilty. It's considered "unpatriotic" or "against America" to mention these things, especially around July 4.

As a pacifist, I've often had trouble understanding this sense of patriotism, the honoring of those that died in the military, and have never really felt it myself. To me, a great tragedy is that so many of those in the armed forces died, but not for our freedom. An obvious example of that is Vietnam. And this is not a slam against the people that were there; it is a complaint about people that think every military action is justified and preserves our freedom. It's also about the people that think that these actions must be taken, no matter the cost of human lives on the other side. That American lives are more important than Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Iranian, or Iraqi lives.

So, I've tended to think about patriotism as rather unseemly. What purpose does it serve, I thought, to be blindly devoted to one's government, supporting its every military move, even when people are clearly dying without preserving our freedom or anyone else's?

Many of those people would also tell me to be thankful that we have more freedoms than anyone else (I'm not so sure that's true) and that my comments make me ungrateful.

I heard yesterday an interesting point: we Americans do have many rights and privileges. Yet with each one comes responsibility for us as citizens. A democracy cannot function unless its citizens think, evaluate, and throw out the people that take the country in the wrong direction.

I'd advance this hypothesis: A true American patriot is one who seeks, speaks, and votes the truth.

One year ago, I noted the Quovix experiment to find candidates for a job by blogging. That experiment didn't work out.

This year, they tried it again. This time Quovix CEO Marty Morrow reports Blogging beats Monster.com for job posting. He lists some benefits, which center around greater interaction and ability to learn about what makes potential employees tick (and the ability to learn what makes potential employers tick).

Meanwhile, Dan is going the other way: he's blogging to find employment.

Maybe someone should write something to match up the Martys and the Dans... but then we already have monster.com, right?

Does the whole thing stop working if "everybody" starts doing it, because then you have all the riff-raff too? Or does that just make it better, because the social network is larger?

Check out CNN.com - Working for the weekend? - Jul 1, 2004. I've just got to ask -- what's so bad about letting people have either Saturday or Sunday off, and 24 consecutive hours off in a week? I think we need to all step back and ask whether the 24/7 lifestyle is really a good thing overall. I think it's not. And living in a small town where most places are closed on Sunday (and a fair number on Saturday too), I can say that it is easily managable and works just fine.