Zinn on Patriotism

Here is the quote I read today from Howard Zinn on patriotism.

"Patriotism to me means doing what you think your country should be doing. Patriotism means supporting your government when you think it's doing right, opposing your government when you think it's doing wrong. Patriotism to me means really what the Declaration of Independence suggests. And that is that government is an artificial entity....
In other words, the government is not holy; the government is not to be obeyed when the government is wrong. So to me patriotism in its best sense means thinking about the people in the country, the principles for which the country stands for, and it requires opposing the government when the government violates those principles."

It can be found in its entirety here: Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky rare joint interview.

I highly recommend checking out the article, which can also be listened to.

As the Web site states:

In a Democracy Now! special from Boston, two of the city’s leading dissidents, Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, sit down for a rare joint interview. Noam Chomsky began teaching linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge over 50 years ago. He is the author of dozens of books on linguistics and U.S. foreign policy. Howard Zinn is one of the country’s most widely read historians. His classic work “A People’s History of the United States” has sold over 1.5 million copies and it has altered how many teach the nation’s history. Chomsky and Zinn discuss Vietnam, activism, history, Israel-Palestine, and Iraq, which Chomsky calls “one of the worst catastrophes in military and political history.”