Before going off to campaign among voters, I spent a little time ruminating about July 4th since it will be on peoples’ minds in between a swig of a beer and a bite of a burger. I turned to my trusty dictionary to find the definition of “patriot.” It says here, among other things, that a patriot is a person “devoted to the welfare of one’s country.” Aha…

The patriots of our country, then, must be those who opposed the Iraq war and now work to end the endless occupation of Iraq because how can the welfare of our country be anything but improved when we prevent the killing of our young men and women and the utter waste of hundreds of billions of dollars? Patriotism does not mean you send our men and women to die in Iraq because it will make you look tough.

The patriots of our country are not determined by the number of times they salute the flag or how many times a person mechanically mouths the words “I support the troops,” a slogan that increasingly loses any meaning because it is used so cravenly to manipulate and obfuscate what a politician is really doing. Patriotism is having a clear vision of what is good for the country, a moral compass that is not guided by poll numbers and expressed in media sound-bite slogans.

The patriots of our country, who are devoted to the welfare of our country, believe that our country should never attack countries that pose no imminent threat to the United States, certainly not in the face of widespread international opposition to a war of choice, not necessity.

The patriots of our country, who truly are devoted to the welfare of our country, would not squander billions of dollars to destroy another country but make sure that that money is used to cover every person who lacks health insurance in America, or hire 3.5 million elementary school teachers, or build 24,000 new schools for those teachers or provide 40 million scholarships for university students, our future generation of leaders.

The patriots of our country, who truly believe in the welfare of our country, are those who stand in the way of corporate power. The welfare of any country is measured by the well-being of its people: can they eat, can they earn a decent wage, can they have a roof over their heads, can they keep themselves and their families healthy? By that measure, it is the people in union halls who try to fight for a better life for millions of workers who are the true patriots—not the greedy CEOs who take for themselves hundreds of millions of dollars at the same time that they take away health care and, yes, steal the pension of thousands of workers (because, after all, pensions are deferred compensation—workers’ wages that they put off taking today for the promise down the road of a modest security in retirement).

The patriots of our country cherish the right of people to speak up and even say things that others don’t like or support. So, the true patriots of the country, on a day when the flag is such a prominent symbol, would say clearly that they would never vote, whether on a constitutional amendment or another piece of legislation, to ban the burning of the flag because to do so undermines a core principle on which our country was founded.

The patriots of our country are found in the churches, synagogues and mosques that try to empower communities based on strong spiritual beliefs that place value on peace and justice or in places throughout our state where people would rather work to build decent communities then be tools of a never-ending obsession to extend the American Empire.

Real patriots are people who don’t stick their fingers up to see which way the wind is blowing but work to change the way the wind is blowing.

Real patriots are the people who stand up and refuse to be silent because they know what is right and what is wrong. They are not swayed by how the wind blows because they know they have the power to change its direction.

Go out and thank your patriot today.