Courage and Patriotism--What Does it Mean

Funny how things kind of link together--I had been reading Sister Toldjah blog on how some of Obama's camp is bashing McCain's military record--and I go downstairs and there's my husband watching this clip on his computer: "Marcus Luttrell, a former Navy SEAL whose story of heroism in Afghanistan is told in his book "Lone Survivor," shared his world view at the National Rifle Association event in Louisville on May 16."



I thought the video of Marcus Luttrell was very powerful in context with what I had been reading and struggling with in my own head about Courage and Patriotism and whether John McCain doesn't really understand the nature of the Vietnam War because he was in a Prison camp for 5 years and missed the worst of the war (Well, that's what his fellow Democrat Senators that also served seem to think). I think that there is just a difference between how liberals and conservatives view courage and patriotism. It's not an easy thing to grasp and I'm sure I will get blasted if I say that conservatives better understand what the founding fathers understood about dying for their country--dying for a cause greater than themselves. For liberals patriotism and courage have been tainted by the 1960s, Vietnam, and Watergate even. Somewhere after "The Tet Offensive" and "The Summer of Love" the world changed and patriotism wasn't cool anymore--the United States become the establishment, the evil empire, that had to be sullied in some way--put in its place--and the military become just a disgraceful arm of that evil empire that did nothing but bad things (why look at all the movies Hollywood has made about the heinous acts of the armed forces).

Update:
At some point I realized that I really left this unfinished--I still working on what the difference is---a start is that Liberals and Conservatives view the Vietnam War through different eyes. Liberals feel we got out of an unwinnable war. Conservatives believe that we left our allies in the lurch--to be slaughtered after promising that we wouldn't (the war was winnable--Tet had proven that).