It's patriotic to pay your taxes.
It's patriotic for a CEO to share record breaking profits with all of his employees, not just shareholders. Furthermore, American companies should be eager to pay their taxes for the betterment of the country that has provided them with the resources to achieve so much success.
It's patriotic to buy American and employ Americans. It's particularly important that our own government buy American rather than employ the lowest overseas bidder. In this age of terrorism, it's beyond me why we allow foreign companies to manufacture our military equipment.
It's patriotic to care about the welfare of your fellow Americans and I think it's a moral obligation to ensure that all Americans can afford healthcare. If we want a healthy and robust economy, then we should work to ensure a healthy and robust workforce.
It's patriotic to determine our economic strength by how many people have reached middle class status each year, not by how well Wall Street has done.
It's patriotic for a government to care enough about its people that it doesn't rely solely on market forces to determine everything from the quality of our retirement to our ability to see a doctor.
In the last 12 years (or even 30), our government has not demonstrated its patriotism based on American values...unless you define the primary American value as greed.
If patriotism means making one's country the best it can possibly be, perhaps we should be asking our politicians how much they truly love America.
Great piece and welcome to the RK community.
The past few days have been even worse. Speaking Thursday on ABC's "Good Morning America," Biden not only acknowledged that the wealthy would pay higher taxes if if he and Obama won the White House but said that doing so would be "patriotic." "It's time to be patriotic," he said. "Time to jump in, time to be part of the deal, time to help get America out of the rut." Whether or not you agree with that sentiment, emphasizing that Obama would raise rates on rich folks (instead of saying that he'd lower them on the middle-classes) was clearly off-message--and the "patriotism" sound bite gave the GOP something catchy to hang its "redistribution of wealth" hat on. Accompanied by a sarcastic ad, McCain's response was scathing: "Raising taxes in a tough economy isn't patriotic. It's not a badge of honor. It's just dumb policy." Expect to hear more on Biden's idea of patriotism before Nov. 4.
Let me get this straight. All week we've been talking about the government taking on another trillion dollars in debt to bail out Wall Street. We basically have a voluntary tax reporting system, albeit enforced by a relatively small number of audits. But it is basically voluntary. How is it Presidential, or good leadership, or even smart politics, for McCain and Palin to be suggesting that it is "stupid" and "dumb policy" to raise taxes?