The English language has repeatedly been destroyed by ideologues who manipulate the language to suit their needs. "Patriotism" is a word that has no real meaning, but if it did, it would include people who don't necessarily celebrate every war and worship our most authoritarian institutions, like the military and the executive branch and corporate America. Rarely are lefists -- much less liberals -- celebrated as patriots.

I do not regard warmongers as patriotic. Nor do I regard corporations and the practicioners of raw capitalism as patriotic or pro-American. People who use their neighbor's children to fight their wars and who pollute the oceans and dirty the air do not qualify as patriots but anti-patriots, using their authority to destroy society and even Planet Earth for profit.

Here are some of the unheralded patriots: people who truly made this society democratic and free. The folks who hang the flag on July 4 should be thanking these people. Yet I wonder if a significant percentage of the population even knows who they are.

William O. Douglas
William Brennan
Earl Warren
Thurgood Marshall

These guys were on the Supreme Court during the period we now call the Warren Court. Douglas served from 1939-1975. Brennan sat from 1956 to 1990, and Warren was Chief Justice from 1954 through 1969. Marshall sat from 1967 through 1991. The country as we know it would probably not exist without the Warren Court, which expansively interpreted the Constitution for the first time in the nation's history, opening up doors for racial and other political minorities, keeping the police honest, breathing life into the First Amendment and preventing this country from becoming a theocracy.

As the average Joe what makes this country special. He'll say we have the right of free speech and free association, the right to worship as we please, the right of privacy and to basically do whatever the hell we want to with our lives. He'll also say that we do not have a political police force or a gulag. Average Joe does not know that these freedoms may be outlined in the Constitution, but no one really brought these promises to life until the Warren Court came around, roughly from the late 1930's to the early 1970's, when the Court broke down barriers in every walk of life.

Thank William O. Douglas for being maybe the best Justice we ever had for First Amendment expression, and for recognizing the right to privacy in 1965. "Privacy" appears nowhere in the Constitution, but Douglas and the other Justices implied that the Bill of Rights, fairly read, promoted the right of privacy. Everyone values privacy. Few know where it comes from.

Thank Earl Warren for coming to the Supreme Court seemingly to strike down racial segregation in all its forms. It was Warren who wrote the seminal Brown v. Board of Education (1954) and other decisions which made blacks equal citizens for the first time.

Thank William Brennan for consistently finding in favor of the little guy over the course of 30 years on the Court, wheeling and dealing behind the scenes at the Supreme Court to get the five votes necessary to expand speech rights, associational rights, womens' rights and the rights of war protesters.

Thank Thurgood Marshall for being the greatest lawyer of the 20th Century. We go to work each day, but really, does it even matter if we show up? Would anyone care, or even notice? Do we accomplish anything meaningful in our work? Aren't we better off staying home to read up on social and political issues, maybe teaching ourselves how to paint or play a musical instrument? For Marshall, coming to work meant bringing the Constitution to life against social degenerates who would have felt more at home in Apartheid South Africa, or some other fascist hell-hole. While we duck and cover when someone wants to put another 40 pound jug on the water cooler, Marshall risked his life in the deep south, trying cases in hostile courtrooms. He was rewarded with a Supreme Court appointment, and from 1967 through 1969, thanks to Thurgood, the Supreme Court had a guaranteed liberal majority on nearly every issue that came before it.

All good things must end, though. Earl Warren was replaced by Warren Burger, a pompous Nixon flunky who worked to halt the gains made by the Warren Court. And Burger was the second coming of William O. Douglas in light of his replacement, William Rehnquist, who during the 1960's lobbied against antidiscrimination laws in Arizona and was widely believed to oppose the Court's seminal ruling in Brown v. Board of Education which (and you should know this) ruled that the government cannot shove black children into separate schools. Marshall was replaced by Clarence Thomas, a guy widely believed to have sexually harassed a subordinate and who has called for the wholesale repudiation of many of the Warren Court's precedents.

Other patriots include the anti-war protester, from Vietnam to the present. That long-hair with an "impeach Nixon" or "impeach Bush" sign is a patriot. The newspaper editors who published the Pentagon Papers in 1971, defying the degenerates in the Nixon administration who went to court to stop the papers from telling the truth. And the guy who absconded with the Pentagon Papers and brought it to the newspapers was a patriot, too.