Patriotism isn’t symbolic. It’s not the flag or a lapel pin. It’s not emotion either. It’s not love for your country or hope for our future. Patriotism is action. It’s participation. Asked what kind of government we formed in our early days, Benjamin Franklin responded, “A Republic, if you can keep it.” That is what patriotism is: the act of keeping our republic.
A republic functions on the principle that elected officials represent the people. There are and always have been threats to that representation. However, it’s particularly disappointing when one of our defenses against those threats becomes one of our biggest obstacles to honest representation. I’m talking about the Free Press. Meant to be a powerful champion of the public, it has grown into a corrupt manipulator of public thought.
A recent example of media infringement on our true and free representation is the GOP debate that took place last night at Dartmouth. In this instance, Bloomberg and Washington Post chose to filter the message by excluding specific candidates.
As a strong supporter of Governor Gary Johnson, I was upset. But as a patriot, I was furious. How can Bloomberg and the Washington Post get away with this? We let them. That’s how. I didn’t want to let them, so I did what I could to inject another voice into the discussion. I ran Promoted Tweets during the debate.
I wasn’t the only one. Mitt Romney was fortunate enough to have the spare change to throw at Twitter, as if locking down the mainstream media’s support wasn’t enough.
I was very happy to see Governor Gary Johnson turn to Reddit to answer questions during the debate. He was also active on Twitter. And the first time he was excluded from a debate, he answered all the debate questions via YouTube. This is a guy that doesn’t have a problem with transparency!
Also excluded was Fred Karger and Buddy Roemer.
It’s often said that freedom isn’t free. I can tell you that it costs $92. Of course, that only bought me a small voice against the deafening shroud of the Entertainment Media. If we all worked together our voice can’t be muted.
