Note to my readers: I don’t hate America. I love America, I love freedom and I love the things America stands for. However, I really, really would rather that America would live up to her own ideal, e.g., by keeping her fucking promises and by acting on her ideals rather on immediate, short-term expediency.

Rush Limbaugh once stated that it’s not Democracy that makes us strong; that it’s our economy that makes us strong. He’s 100% right.

However: it is not our strength that makes us good. It is our ideal of freedom and liberal democracy that makes us good; it is this that the people of the world love about America, more than anything.

Furthermore: It is our inability to act in a manner consistent with our ideals that makes other people not trust us. (The astute fan of Osama Bin Laden will notice that his appeals for followers always draw on the injustices in Saudi Arabia and Palestine; he never mentions destroying America’s freedom. The line that we’re being fed by the talking heads, that the terrorists hate our freedom, is a complete and utter lie.)

I don’t mind a strong America. I would much rather, frankly, have a good and
free America. You know, like the kind of America we were promised when we were
kids; like the kind Thomas Jefferson wanted.

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