In October, 2007, I was traveling on a ship through the Kiel Canal (Nord-Ostsee Kanal) on my way from Dover to St. Petersburg. Lots of people, presumably mostly Germans, stood on the banks of the wide canal and watched as as the ship passed.  I’ll never forget, and I have a photograph to remind me, a man running along the bank of the canal as the ship passed.  He was carrying an American flag.  I couldn’t hear what he was yelling, but I knew it was something good, something positive.  I was moved... and very, very glad to be an American.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor introduced Mr. Romney to a Virginia crowd yesterday by saying that Republicans have been unable to get anything done in Washington because President Obama and Democrats have created four years of gridlock in the nations capital.  Say again!  What! Cantor, Speaker of the House John Boehner, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell have spent four years boldly refusing to cooperate with Democrats in the House and in the Senate on any project, saying out loud and in public that their first priority has been to make sure Barack Obama is a one-term president. They designed the gridlock that has frozen government.  Knowing full well what the game plan has been for the past four years, Romney said, “Let me tell you -- for me to get the things done, I just described I’m going to have to reach across the aisle and meet with good Democrats who love America, just like you love America, and there are, there are good Democrats like that.”  

Cantor’s introduction and Romney’s speech dripped with cynicism and hypocrisy.  The speeches disgust me, but the part that implied that there are, after all, a few “good Democrats who love America, just like you (Republican faithful) love America” makes me mad.  I am a Democrat. I’m sick of the shallow thinking on the part of some people who push the idea that only Republicans are true patriots. Out here in the real, honest-to-goodness America where most of us live, most people manage to relate to each other in places of commerce and in venues for entertainment and in social environments with an understanding that we citizens of the United States are a wonderfully diverse population... and we know that tolerance and compromise are necessary if we are to be a civil society.  Most of us recognize that patriotism isn’t expressed by bumper stickers or lapel pins but by the way we treat each other.  We are America... all of us, Democrats and Republicans and independents, Green Party folks and those disinterested altogether in politics... Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Jews and those who don’t affiliate with any church and have no interest at all in religion are Americans.  We are America.  

America is what we are when we go about the business of making a living for our families... and when we take time off from working at our jobs to relax and to worship and to participate in the processes of government not as government employees but as enthusiastic citizens, we are patriots.  Cantor, Boehner, and McConnell aren’t taking time off from their work when they participate in government activities.  Government is their employment.  They have government jobs which pay exceedingly well, provide them with excellent health insurance, guaranteed no-stress retirement, and other cushy benefits.  As a matter of fact, they work for us, the American people.  

I am offended when Romney or Boehner or Cantor, or McConnell or any other politician, either Republican or Democrat, suggests that we, the people, don’t love American when we don’t agree with them.  Among the many reasons I support and promote the reelection of President Barack Obama is that he does his work and conducts his campaign for reelection without implying that the people “on the other side of the aisle” don’t love America. I like the way he goes about his business, which he understands to be America's business... my business... the business of all Americans.  When he takes time away from business, I like the way he takes care of his family.  I like the things he says about his wife, the only wife he has ever had, and I especially like the things he says about what he wants for his children and for all American children... and not just for American children but for all the children of the world. 

Four More Years!  Four More Years!  Four More Years!