Intellectuals and the Flag Story aired: Thursday, February 02, 2006
In his State of the Union Address, President Bush characterized his critics as being defeatists and isolationists, part of the problem and not part of the solution.
One card-carrying member of the left might in part agree.
In his new book, Todd Gitlin, veteran of the Vietnam-era protests and former president of Students for a Democratic Society, challenges his fellow liberals to be more than complainers, or as he writes, "people who view history as a tank, their only job, to stand in the way and block it."
Gitlin says dissent can go hand-in-hand with patriotism, that one can be critical without being Anti-american and in so doing revive the political left -- and maybe America itself.
