Hating America

While browsing through Alex's blog earlier today I found this article by Bruce Bawer. Please, for your own intellectual health, READ THIS ARTICLE. It is long but it's also incredibly intriguing and, in my opinion, incredibly accurate. Just like Alex, I found that Bawer hit the nail right on the head as far as putting into words what has been going on in my head this year.

I have continuously run into people in Germany who have made snide comments about my country and my people to my face. Some of my favorites:

"Culture? You Americans don't have a culture."
(Really? Hmmm...what are those movies you're watching? Those are ours. And how about that music video you're watching on MTV Europe? That's our music. What about those clothes you're wearing? That's our fashion. And where did you get your coffee this morning? Oh, at Starbucks! If we Americans don't have a culture, what the hell are you people importing?)

"America is a unilateral bully. You think it's perfectly okay to just invade a soverign country and bomb innocent people."
(As apposed to standing idly by waiting for the U.N. to make up its mind while those same innocent people are tortured and killed, raped by a dictator's sons in rape rooms, and massacred and buried in mass graves? Really, I'm sure most Iraqis would LOVE to have Saddam back. Oh, and we all know how incredibly effective the U.N. is at peacekeeping - it proved that in Rwanda.)

"America has no history."
(We just happen to be the oldest constitutional republic in the world, thank you very much.)

As the year has gone on, I have found that my sense of pride in my country and in my people has only increased. Negative comments by people around me for a variety of reasons have only served to strengthen my confidence that I am, in fact, a citizen of the greatest nation on the face of the earth. America isn't perfect, to be sure. But she is undoubtedly special, and there is nowhere else I'd rather be.