I feel that much of the debates surrounding the issues of our time can be boiled down to an issue of patriotism and what it means to show one’s love of country.

To me, patriotism means creating a health care system that delivers Americans’ medical care, based on the nature of their needs, not on their ability to pay for it.

It means an educational system that doesn’t overcrowd our classrooms and hurt students and teachers alike. An educational system that is about something more than a standardized exam. Something that sparks students’ imaginations and catalyzes a new generation of engineers, researchers, scientists and mathematicians to close the ever-yawning gap we face with China and India.

It means an economy where the fortunes of ordinary Americans do not rise and fall on the whims of Wall Street bankers.

It means an energy system that neither harms our environment nor leaves us dependent on the oil of foreign dictators.

Patriotism is improving this already great country, and making it even greater.

Sadly, constructive solutions are not what we’re getting from the other side. Today’s Republicans wear patriotism as a blindfold or a lapel pin, and dismiss every attempt to solve our country’s problems as an assault on our very value system. If you listen closely enough, you can almost hear the Republicans, with their eyes closed and ears plugged, with their childish chants of “Socialism” in the face of our enormous challenges. Even worse than defiantly dragging their feet, some of our leaders have begun walking backwards, away from reforms of any kind. Some have even gone so far as to endorse the wing-nuts’ crazy “death panel” myth, and have lent credence to the bizarre spectacles that were the town halls that the media so attentively covered last August.

So, here we sit, wallowing in our dysfunction as a nation, with a handful of senators and representatives tripping over their own egos as they get to decide the fate and nature of reforms that will impact the lives of millions. We’re forced to watch as one party struggles to move America forward and another stares longingly behind. We can only hope that Americans of every political stripe will answer the president’s call to help rebuild this country and make some calls of their own to their elected officials.

Democracy is not a spectator sport, and true patriots don’t watch or boo from the sidelines.