Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.

 

Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.
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If what your country is doing seems to you practically and morally wrong, is dissent the highest form of patriotism?
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Dissent is the highest form of patriotism, Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia
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While some people think that dissent is unpatriotic, I would argue that dissent is the highest form of patriotism.

 

Thomas Jefferson

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Law professor Jim Lindgren of The Volokh Conspiracy has traced the possible origin of this saying back as far as the 11 November 1984 obituary of pacifist activist Dorothy Hewitt Hutchinson in the Philadelphia Inquirer, quoting a 1965 interview. The direct quote there is: "Dissent from public policy can be the highest form of patriotism," she said in an interview in 1965. "I don't think democracy can survive without it, even though you may be crucified by it at times." According to the professor's research, the misattribution was popularized in the 1990's by ACLU president Nadine Strossen. Bill Mullins of the American Dialect Society did further research.

 

Thomas Jefferson

 

No matter that patriotism is too often the refuge of scoundrels. Dissent, rebellion, and all-around hell-raising remain the true duty of patriots.

 

Barbara Ehrenreich

 

To put it in rude, plain, unpalatable words — true patriotism, real patriotism: loyalty not to a Family and a Fiction, but a loyalty to the Nation itself!
..."Remember this, take this to heart, live by it, die for it if necessary: that our patriotism is medieval, outworn, obsolete; that the modern patriotism, the true patriotism, the only rational patriotism, is loyalty to the Nation ALL the time, loyalty to the Government when it deserves it." [Czar Nicholas II]

 

Mark Twain

 

To put it in rude, plain, unpalatable words — true patriotism, real patriotism: loyalty not to a Family and a Fiction, but a loyalty to the Nation itself!
..."Remember this, take this to heart, live by it, die for it if necessary: that our patriotism is medieval, outworn, obsolete; that the modern patriotism, the true patriotism, the only rational patriotism, is loyalty to the Nation ALL the time, loyalty to the Government when it deserves it." [Czar Nicholas II]

 

Samuel Langhorne (Mark Twain) Clemens

 

The Republican form of government is the highest form of government; but because of this it requires the highest type of human nature — a type nowhere at present existing.

 

Herbert Spencer