Sunday, November 04, 2007

What is America?

We inside the boundaries of these 50 United States are American. We're not British, not Canadian, not Italian, not Russian.
We're Americans and as such, we have a specific point of view that is rooted in our collective psyche. We don't support killing for the sake of a despot's power, especially the killing of innocent civilians. And we don't support torture in any form, regardless of the arguments that assert torture is necessary in certain instances, e.g. a time-sensitive tragedy about to unfold unless information is obtained that can stop it. Almost every military professional who's weighed in on this subject agrees that torture rarely achieves its goal. At best, the victim of torture will lie to make the pain stop, if only for a short time. No one can point to a factual instance where torture saved the day, and given the number of torture victims throughout history, I think that puts the question to rest.
And, as Americans, we don't support leaders who lie, whether well-intentioned or not. All lies are designed to do one thing and that's to protect the perpetrator from admitting a truth that puts him/her in a bad light.
We're Americans, and we support individuality and determination. We support unyielding loyalty to the proposition that our children deserve to live in a better world than we grew up in, and we support unyielding commitment to the right of a person't dreams and goals. We honor those who die in pursuit of saving another or upholding the laws our Constitution has birthed. We support the helpless and the hopeless and believe in giving a second chance to anyone who's willing to change and grow.
I'm an American. I believe I live in the greatest nation on earth. But I also believe we've lost our way and are allowing deranged leaders to push our nation into abandoning the Constitution in the name of power for power's sake. Never has my country looked so much like the old Soviet Union and its totalitarian rule than it does today!
What are we going to do about it?