A photograph taken at the recent Glenn Beck-orchestrated rally in Washington shows middle-aged white folks wearing in-your-face T-shirts, notably a flag-waving woman closest to the camera whose shirt proclaims her an AMERICAN PATRIOT. I don’t think myself paranoid for inferring that means those who disagree with her in particulars (as I’m pretty certain I do) are not patriots. It’s exactly like the declarations of the Rapturites, who imply that all those not prepared to be whisked into Heaven at the sound of the trumpets will be “left behind.” The imminence of the Rapture I can countenance, because I think it a serious delusion, and can in any case live with the results; but this noisy business of hijacking the republic with an election in the offing is a bit scary.

One thing I have to give the Tea Partiers: Their rallies have gotten our attention. Incited to frenzies by the Talking Torsos of the Blathersphere, many seem to have forgotten – if they ever knew them – some of the simplest principles of democracy. For example, never impugn the motives of others; load your head with demonstrable facts before shooting off your mouth; we’re all in this fragile little boat together; and you can’t always get what you want when you want it.

A long-ago history master of mine, a thoroughly English Oxonian, used to introduce debatable propositions with the words, “I put it to you that...” One memorable example – “...that the so-called ‘American Revolution’ was quite unnecessary, the creation of self-proclaimed patriots and impatient hotheads. After all, consider Canada...” And off we’d go.

In his memory, I put it to you that no American is a patriot who would deny any of the rights he or she enjoys under the Constitution to any other American. Allowing that times do change and that our conceptions of Constitutional guarantees do, as well; and allowing that our personal points of view clearly influence how we interpret them (the Second Amendment being a prime example), we are still obliged as the heirs of our founders to debate matters as if it were possible that those with whom we disagree might have a point. The scurrilous accusations that President Obama is a Muslim – as if there were something wrong with that – and the suggestions that his birth certificate is a forgery are prime examples of the very things we should avoid; yet a startling percentage of American patriots actually believe them, and use them to justify a host of other disagreements.

Samuel Johnson, the famous coffee house debater who coined, “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel,” expounded on it at greater length in his 1774 essay titled “The Patriot”:

A man sometimes starts up a patriot, only by disseminating discontent, and propagating reports of secret influence, of dangerous counsels, of violated rights, and encroaching usurpation. This practice is no certain note of patriotism. To instigate the populace with rage beyond the provocation, is to suspend publick happiness, if not to destroy it. He is no lover of his country, that unnecessarily disturbs its peace. Few errors and few faults of government, can justify an appeal to the rabble; who ought not to judge of what they cannot understand, and whose opinions are not propagated by reason, but caught by contagion.

In Johnson’s 18th-century England, of course, the rabble could not vote; in the United States today we can. So it behooves us to listen and read carefully; to question the sources of every bit of information we imbibe; to remember how much easier it is to believe arguments we agree with than those we don’t; to post on the walls of our minds the words of those more intelligent, or more experienced, or more articulate than we. F. Scott Fitzgerald, for instance: “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” Or Adlai Stevenson: “Americans are suckers for good news. Given the choice between disagreeable fact and agreeable fantasy, they will choose fantasy every time.”

It’s helpful to remember the Know-Nothing Party of the 1850s, whose members vituperated against Roman Catholic immigration, in tones eerily similar to those of today; also how many hundreds of thousands of Americans were captivated during the late ‘30s by the anti-Semitic and pro-Fascist radio demagoguery of Father Coughlin. It may be useful to read Adam Gopnik’s New Yorker review of John Lukacs’ Churchill, in which Churchill is described as “a patriot, imbued with a love of place and people, while Hitler was a nationalist, infuriated by a hatred of aliens and imaginary enemies.”

The best person ever in North America to appreciate the fragility and potential of – and the dangers to – our republic, has to have been George Washington. Having defeated the world’s most powerful government and army in an effort that often appeared foredoomed; aware of the chance to create something utterly new in the history of governments, but deeply concerned that factionalism and conflicting personalities could spoil it all, he crystallized his thoughts in his 1796 Farewell Address – which reads in small part, “Let me now...warn you...against the baneful effects of the Spirit of Party....This Spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its roots in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists...in all Governments; but in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy.”