Conservatives are incensed because Biden said this:
We're on strange grounds with this debate. Republicans typically like to dictate the terms of what entails being a patriot, while Democrats cower in the corner. They won't take kindly to being lectured about a topic they like to think of as one they own. Palin gave a tepid retort about how raising taxes means losing jobs. Yawn. Jonah said that equating legal requirements with patriotism is gross. Really?
It's dumbfounding that the same people who wave flags and blindly swear a loyalty to a conservative president (even though his loyalty is to uphold the Constitution) recoil at the notion that patriotism might come with sacrifice. Of course, after eight years of fighting a war on the cheap and being asked to charge more to our credit cards while our president stages some of the most powerful photo-ops in history, it's understandable that people might think love of country should come with no strings attached and feel like a Lee Greenwood video.
We live in an imperfect union and that stretches to the social pact we've made. In a system of progressive taxation, it is the duty of the wealthy to pay more than those further down the socio-economic ladder. It doesn't mean you should be able to have preferred access to the carpool lane or that you should be able to skip to the front of the line at Starbucks. It means in a free market country, where tremendous wealth can be made no matter your starting point, it's admirable, yes patriotic, to give back more to the system that allows for such immense personal economic advancement. This is where George W. Bush has failed this country. In a time of war its been the rule, not the exception, to ask citizens to contribute more. He never did that. Yet here we are fighting two wars while Wall St. crumbles and a detached, unenlightened base of conservatives stammer that patriotism is defined not by actions, but with empty rhetoric. Support the Troops! Um, just let someone else pay for it.
This is a fight Democrats should be spoiling for. Well done Joe Biden.
