How to Really Love Your Country: Five Objectives for True Patriots

Throughout history, some of the most respected defenders of liberty felt that patriotism implies thoughtfulness over blind acceptance of the norm. Socrates, Henry David Thoreau and Martin Luther King Jr. all encouraged active efforts to improve one's country by adhering to the highest standards of behavior, by government and by the citizens themselves.

There is certainly room for improvement in America. Here is a Top 5 list of candidates for thoughtfulness over blind acceptance.

1. How we spend our money

The United States is responsible for almost half of the world's annual military expenditures of over $1 trillion, yet President Bush approved another record increase in the U.S. defense budget for 2008. The total estimated cost of the Iraqi and Afghanistan conflicts is now $811 billion, much more than the $518 billion spent on the Vietnam War. Congressional Democrats estimate that the average American family of four has contributed over $20,000 to the war in the Middle East.

As 40 percent of each American citizen's tax bill -- about $5,000 a year -- goes for military equipment that protects us from Cold War enemies, we spend only one-tenth of 1 percent of our GDP on infrastructure (in 2005), compared to 9 percent for China. The American Society of Civil Engineers gave D to D- grades to our drinking water, navigable waterways and energy power grids. Every time our power structures go out or our roads and bridges crumble, the money needed to fix them is being spent in Iraq, or on unstable allies in Pakistan or Saudi Arabia.

2. What we give to the world

According to the U.S. Congressional Research Service, nearly half of the guns sold to developing countries in 2005 came from the United States.

In 2003, 20 of the top 25 recipients of U.S. arms sales in the developing world were declared undemocratic or human rights abusers by the U.S. State Department's own Human Rights Report.

The United States sold weapons to 18 of the 25 countries involved in active conflicts in 2003. We armed both sides in conflicts between India and Pakistan, Iran and Iraq, Greece and Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Israel, Peru and Ecuador, China and Taiwan, and Israel and the rest of the Middle East. In Saudi Arabia, the United States provided arms to protect the monarchy from other Saudis who were also armed by the United States.

3. The people we ignore

As we fight for freedom in the Middle East, people in Nigeria live with 24-hour gas flaring and air and water pollution caused by our own oil companies, while angry young men roam the streets with guns because they can't find jobs. Ten-year-olds in India get whipped as they work without pay in textile factories making our clothes. Children in the Congo work 12-hour days digging tin oxide out of dusty, toxic mines for pennies a day so that we can have our cell phones.

A young Congolese boy named Muhanga Kawaya tells us what children have to endure to dig out minerals for our cell phones. There are many reasons for this, but one primary reason is the multinational companies who ignore human rights laws.

"In the hole you have to crawl and squeeze and suck in your belly to make it through. The next danger is the huge rocks above; often they bury us and once they move, it's instant death. Then there's the darkness. And there's no air. Once you get down more than 200 feet, the air flow stops altogether. It's up to you to figure out how to breathe. As you crawl through the tiny hole, using your arms and fingers to scratch, there's not enough space to dig properly and you get badly grazed all over. And then, when you do finally come back out with the cassiterite, the soldiers are waiting to grab it at gunpoint. Which means you have nothing to buy food with."

4. Our lifestyles

We Americans have 5 percent of the world's population but use 25 percent of the world's oil. The average American home has increased from 1,000 square feet to 2,400 square feet since 1950, even though the average family size has steadily decreased. Ten thousand new hosquare feet or more. Our big vehicles average less miles per gallon than 20 years ago, yet we're driving 24 percent more miles than in 1980. We use as much gas idling in traffic as the annual output of Equatorial Guinea, the third-largest oil producer in sub-Saharan Africa.