Patriotism (pa'tre et- e tiz' m) noun: love and loyal or zealous support of one's own country. December 16, 1773-rebels, disguised as Mohawk Indians, boarded British ships dumping 10, 000 English pounds worth of tea. This act of protest would soon become one of the most important dates in American history, The Boston Tea Party. It eventually led up to the American Revolution, but was it an act of patriotism? If patriotism is the "zealous support of one's own country", how do you explain "patriots" leading an attack on their own country? Perhaps a better example of this can be found in Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities. When the French Revolution is started by the common working class, every day seems to be a huge bloodbath constantly rising in the streets. The slaughter of aristocrats became routine, desensitizing the lower-class to the truth. France was as much of the aristocrats' country as it was theirs. How can you define a patriot so easily when the concept isn't so clean-cut? Throughout literature and the media there have been several examples of what true patriotism is. Even the oldest writings in history, such as the Bible, have depicted rebellion and love of liberty. But liberty against whom? If you truly are a citizen of a specific country, is the battle for freedom against the nation? Or is it really against the oppression of social class? In A Tale of Two Cities, a poor and desperate man, Gaspard's, child is killed by the careless Marquis Evremonde, who is more concerned about the dirt on his shoes than about the peasants. In retaliation, the man murders the marquis in his sleep. A crazed, lower class woman, Madame Defarge, is out to get the same family for different reasons. Since she can't kill the marquis herself, she settles to execute his nephew, Charles; even though he is completely innocent of his family's past. Is Gaspard and Madame Defarge's anger directed at their country? No. Their actions were taken out upon the higher class, the real party they felt had caused their pain. In the case of several revolutions there has been, undoubtedly, a fine line between being patriotic and being cold-hearted and bitter. Most wars have been started not with freedom even in mind, but with hope of gaining revenge and making innocent people suffer. Their motives aren't to make a positive change in their country; to make an ideal society possible, they simply want reprisal for all the wrong done to them. This simple reason is why one of the greatest genocides in history took place. In the early 1900s, a young man entered an art show in Germany. One of the judges was an old, insensitive man, (who just happened to be a Jew) and criticized the young man's artwork, ruthlessly, giving the boy a terrible rating. Because of the injustice this young man felt had been done to him, he later became the worst monster history had ever known. This young man was Adolph Hitler, the leader of a mass murder of the Jewish people during World War II. True patriotism, I think, is something we've all lost in a sense, along with a real cause to fight for. Our forefathers fought for freedom to give us the land we can call home, a land where our freedom was bought by hard work and loyalty. However, not very long ago the same country that won it's freedom set off on a mission to liberate an oppressed nation and the protests have never stopped. In A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens' portrays the revolutionist not as loyal and hardworking, but as barbaric and desperate people who took the easy way out. How is it that the motive for revenge can be stronger than a passion to be what God made us to be? Or how Dickens' said "...the vigorous tenacity of love, always so much stronger than hate." It can't...there's something common in all of us that binds us together and it's the basic will to be free. Perhaps patriotism is truly defined best in The Declaration of the Rights of Man: "Men are born and remain free and equal in rights...the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty...and resistance to oppression." True patriotism is knowing our rights and constantly fighting for our belief in them.