The Republicans have managed to turn patriotism into mindless goose-stepping and the Democrats have let them. The roots of it are in the Vietnam police action that lasted 14 years. Johnson started it with a lie, Nixon continued it with more lies and it ended under Ford with a shrug. During that conflict any hope for rational discourse about the direction of foreign policy was beaten down by hard-hats, burned up by riots, and shot by the National Guard. And we haven't had more than moments of rational foreign policy since. Because when we talk about foreign policy we have to define who is a patriot (likes war) and who is not (wants peace). The chest-thumping, sneering, chicken hawks have had their way on every front and have driven the country into a ditch. Every time that has happened in the past, we elected Democrats to pull us out of the ditch, then turned on them when things were going well again. Patriots don't just love their country, they do something to make it better. Supporting a war based on 1,000 lies doesn't make our country better. Supporting torture as a policy doesn't make our country better. Running up a debt of nearly 10 trillion dollars also is not a smart idea. Every time the Republicans/Conservatives/Righ­t Wingers, call them what you want to and try not to cuss, are in charge they screw up royally. And their only defense is to thrash and screech that anyone who points out what a bunch of worse than useless shmucks they are is unpatriotic. Like they're the country and the rest of us don't count. And the Democrats/Liberals/Left Wingers are so busy trying to prove their patriotism they don't oppose the Republicans the way they should and avoid difficult tasks for the country to undertake. McCain tries to be a clone of Bush and now Obama is trying to do the same. We need a progressive government more than we have since the 1930s. Did we beat the real Axis of Evil and end the Depression under Republican leadership? Was going to the Moon a Conservative plan? Did the policy of containment that starved the Soviet Union to death come from a Right Wing administration? Was Social Security, one of the most successful government programs in any country in any age, the product of a Republican think tank? Instead of Right or Left or Conservative or Liberal, how about Smart or Stupid? You can judge which is which by the results. And if it needs spin, it's stupid. Grow up America and open your eyes! Our enemies have us down and are stomping on our head. Not all our enemies are foreign, and the most effective are domestic. And they do it to us over and over in the name of patriotism.