PATRIOTISM VS PRAGMATISM

Patriotism is love of the country; pragmatism is love of the practical. Can the two co-exist....?

To test the question we have countless examples at hand. On the national level there is today's heated dialog over budget, health care, energy, education and everyone's all time favorite: The perennial are coffee-and-red-wine-really-good- for-us-or-not. To be a patriot it would seem we should be reading and learning everything we can about such matters. Free schools and responsible media are there to help us be responsibly informed citizens. Indeed, the current crisis over the loss of newspapers raises the question of how can a democracy function without informed citizens.

But then we have our bottom-line pragmatists. These are the life-hardened skeptics who say something like: "Look, when these guys come up with a final answer, that's when I'll pay attention. Till then everything's just hot air." Given that the answers keep changing and the deciders keep shifting, the skeptics have a point. I mean, how many times have we been emphatically told that coffee is absolutely bad for us until they count the number of ways it's good for us. Or that Illinois's budget is in crisis although on second thought except for those items our representatives decide are in demand.

Focusing on this month's final debate over the new Illinois budget, everyone agrees it's in a mess. But everyone down in Springfield agrees the mess has to do with someone else's priorities not theirs. Hard not to throw up your arms with the skeptical pragmatists and say: "Just wake me up when it's over."

There's only one thing wrong with that. Everything!

Democracy is built on the notion of majority rule, but history is built on the way well-organized minorities usually carry the day. Without such a dedicated minority we probably wouldn't have had the American Revolution...poor white farmers dying for the cause of rich Confederate slaveholders...the country entering World War I... the Prohibition Act....and the Iraq War. In each case, the silent majority tended to follow the organized minority.

And so it may be again. At both the national level and right here at the state level. There are well organized minorities (AKA, vested interests) with well thought out agendas. While the pragmatists sleep, the self-proclaimed patriots act. But it would be wrong to label this "conspiracy." The word is sorely over-worked by every Hollywood director and novelist out to woo an audience. According to democracy, minorities just like majorities have the right to speak out and fight for their cause.

It's not important whether you are in the majority or the minority. What is important -- essential -- is that you play your role as a well-informed citizen. No matter what they say about the old western gunslingers, no one gets their man wildly shooting from the hip.

It's the head, stupid...!