I wrote in 2008:

[Biden] dubs paying taxes “patriotic.” He did this on ABC’s “Good Morning, America,” saying that while Obama would increase taxes on the wealthy, “It’s time to be patriotic.” And he has said it in it political rallies, telling a woman who said her friends are worried that under Obama they faced a tax increase, that she should say to them: “It’s time to be patriotic.”

So under Obama/Biden, Americans would demand what our country can do for our groups, and ask not what we can do for our country, because they’ll tell us: pay more taxes.

Now this is a very strange definition of patriotism. True patriotism is not something that is demanded or coerced with the implicit threat of violence the way taxes are. Nations that demand acts of patriotism tend to be dictatorships. They also tend to be run by socialist blowhards, but that must be mere coincidence.

In today’s speech, Pres. Obama told us that “any serious plan to tackle our deficit will require us to put everything on the table” (yes, we already know about the Statist’s Table and what “everything on the table means”: “patriotism” higher taxes) and makes the requisite calls for “investment” (him spending your patriotism) and “sacrifice” (you coughing up more patriotism). He also makes an interesting complaint about what caused so “much damage … to the national checkbook”:

But after Democrats and Republicans committed to fiscal discipline during the 1990s, we lost our way in the decade that followed.  We increased spending dramatically for two wars and an expensive prescription drug program – but we didn’t pay for any of this new spending.  Instead, we made the problem worse with trillions of dollars in unpaid-for tax cuts – tax cuts that went to every millionaire and billionaire in the country; tax cuts that will force us to borrow an average of $500 billion every year over the next decade.

In Obama’s mind, tax cuts caused the problem. Not spending. And certainly not the spending-on-steroids-&-Four-Loko during his presidency, which made the profligacy under his predecessor look like pinchpenny thrift. And now he says,

we have to think about what’s required to preserve the American Dream for future generations. This sense of responsibility – to each other and to our country – this isn’t a partisan feeling.  It isn’t a Democratic or Republican idea.  It’s patriotism.

No, Mr. President, patriotism is steering the national economy away from the cliffs.

And besides, “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.” (What? Y’all didn’t mean dissent from Democrats in power?)