John Kerry, whose fifteen minutes expired ages ago, is trying to pretend he’s still relevant while using a widely-debunked quotation attributed to Thomas Jefferson about “dissent being the highest form of patriotism.”
Not only is that quote false, it’s just plain stupid. Dissent is no more patriotic than anything else – is neo-Nazi David Duke a “patriot” for his dissent? Was Timothy McVeigh a “patriot” for his act of “dissent.” What of the Michigan Militia that Clinton decried? Was their dissent not the height of patriotism? What about the drunk guy wearing no pants and urinating on the street – he’s certainly dissenting from popular norms. Should we be pinning a medal on his chest?
The idea that “dissent” = “patriotism” is the sort of faux-intellectual doggerel that the left embraces without ever even considering for as much as a second that it doesn’t mean a damn thing. Patriotism isn’t dissent, it is “love and devotion to one’s country”. Dissent can be patriotic, but not when it’s all about putting one’s petty hatreds above one’s nation.
Funny, though… the people I heard use that quote the most back in the 90’s were closer to your end of the political spectrum than Kerry’s… so I wouldn’t say its symptomatic of the left…