This was posted a ways back and nobody had anything to say . . . maybe you will be my huckeberry?
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I'll offer my analysis as to the OP and say that no, a "modern day liberal" can not be considered a patriot in the USA because "modern day liberals" see the US Constitution as an impediment to the public policy goals and society they would like to see created. "Modern day liberals" actively endeavor to craft work-arounds for the Constitution's limits or just happily and unashamedly ignore them.
I find it sickening that "modern day liberals" announce with great self-congradulations that they respect rights but in practice they are hostile to the fundamental American concepts of liberty and equality. Their political philosophy in fact demands they abandon the foundational principles of "rights" the founders / framers embraced and substitute collectivism and statism and discrimination in their place. That, coupled with the authoritarian governing model that needs to be established to force universal compliance / obedience, violates every concept of what "liberty" is.
The original Lockean concept of rights, embodied in the justification for the American Revolution and the source of authority for the U.S. Constitution, is based on restricting state interference in the lives of citizens by forcing government to respect the citizen's natural, civil and political rights. This was achieved primarily by the very structure of the Constitution being founded on the principles of conferred powers and retained rights.
The US Constitution is founded on the maxim that all governmental power originally resides in the people and the People confer a limited amount of that power to establish government and charge government to perform specific limited duties. This means that
all not surrendered is retained; since no aspect of our rights were placed in the care and control of government, government can assume no power to dictate to the citizen in those matters.
This novel structure of the US Constitution was a primary reason why there was such resistance to the addition of a bill of rights. As Hamilton argued in Federalist 84:
"I . . . affirm that bills of rights, in the sense and to the extent in which they are contended for, are not only unnecessary in the proposed Constitution, but would even be dangerous. They would contain various exceptions to powers not granted; and, on this very account, would afford a colorable pretext to claim more than were granted. For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do?"
Sadly, by "modern day liberal" definition, rights are no longer "exceptions to powers not granted" but are instead, entitlements the framers mistakenly didn't include.
Obama has spoken openly that he feels that
that fact, that the Bill of Rights only secures "negative" rights, is a "fundamental flaw" of the Constitution.
For Obama, it is an oversight that the Bill of Rights "
says what the states can’t do to you, says what the federal government can’t do to you, but it doesn’t say what the federal government or state government must do on your behalf." In Obama's view, rights should be redefined into special grants of power to compel others to act. This line of thought has no connection the the US Constitution and is solely a product of 20th Century communitarian ideals and is the political offspring of the 1917 Soviet Revolution.
The emergence of these new, "second generation" economic, social, and cultural rights, demand a very different role for the state in the lives of the people, completely foreign to the powers conferred to government by the US Constitution.
"Modern day liberal" rants demanding our "rights" to health care, prescription drugs, education, affordable housing, internet access, a living wage and that most basic of human rights, an abortion, are demands that someone else provide these things under governmental order. That is never the true definition of a right.
Our rights are NOT a list of services that government provides for us.
Nor are they tangible commodities that the government compels others to provide to us.
The purpose of this Orwellian new-speak is to redefine our rights into a fuzzy, moldable menu of goods and services, privileges and entitlements that, upon our display of various ID cards, filling out the proper forms and payment of license fees, a bureaucrat can stamp “APPROVED” and our benevolent government will bestow our "rights" upon us. Unfortunately, with that mindset comes the acceptance of the situational denial or outright removal of those "rights" -- for our own good of course.
This agenda of redefining rights and outright denying the existence of original, preexisting rights is the most egregious violation of foundational constitutional principle and for me, a good start on what I consider "modern day liberals" to be and what they stand for and why they cannot be considered patriots here in the USA (somewhere else?, yeah, sure).
