This July 4, I wish we, as a nation, would get over ourselves.

We are not God’s chosen people.

God did not make us a shining city on a hill.

There is no God, and we have no special right to lord ourselves over the planet.

“Manifest Destiny” and other narcissistic ideas have swollen our heads.

President Obama was way off the mark when he recently said, “We must embrace America’s singular role in the course of human events,” he said.

We don’t have a singular role, not now, much less over the long course of human events.

When you examine the actual role the United States has played, it’s not one that has showered us with glory: from slavery and the genocide against Native Americans early on to brutal imperial wars over the last century and more. Starting with the Spanish-American War and the subjugation of the Filipinos and then through dozens of invasions and usurpations in Latin America all the way to Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, U.S. foreign policy has piled the corpses high.

And the best aspects of the United States—not the fighter jets that fly over the celebrations today, nor the size of our economy, nor the “great American spirit,” nor our prowess in sports, nor any other excuse for the adolescent chanting of “USA, USA”—are the ones that are most in decay today: the promise of democracy, and the protection of our civil liberties.

With the Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court last year, which enables corporations to spend unlimited funds to elect or defeat candidates for office, any hope for real political democracy has faded. It’s a decision that has made a joke of the cherished idea of one person, one vote. And the Supreme Court just added to the joke with its decision last month to outlaw Arizona’s clean election law and to scorn any attempts to “level the playing field.” Even before these decisions, our politicians were for sale, rent, or time-share, and the concerns of a majority of citizens—for a living wage, for universal health care—would routinely fall to the ax of corporate power.

And if you broaden the concept of democracy to include economic democracy or a fair economy, we, as a nation, have drifted back into the Gilded Age, where the top 1 percent owns an astronomical amount of the nation’s wealth and income and where economic policy is geared toward letting them grab more and more.

As far as our civil liberties go, the government has taken many of them away. The First Amendment is in shambles, as the FBI and other law enforcement have been infiltrating domestic nonviolent protest groups, and the FBI has just loosened its rules for doing so. The Fourth Amendment is all but deleted, as the Supreme Court, in one decision after another, has given police more leeway to barge into our homes without warrants. The USA Patriot Act and the revisions to the National Security Act legalize additional intrusions by the Executive Branch. And the Military Commissions Act gives the President the authority to declare any person in the United States an “enemy combatant” and then throw that person behind bars.

On this Independence Day and for many a year, we’ve lost any clue about what it means to be independent: to be self-governing, and free from repressive rule.

If we have forsaken the ideals of America, the least we could is not to destroy the Earth in the process.

That means, first and foremost, not to blow it up with nuclear weapons. We and the Russians have 95 percent of the nukes in the world, and we need to move quickly to global nuclear disarmament.

And secondly, that means not to destroy the planet by poisoning the atmosphere. Global climate change is real, it’s here, and we’ve got to deal with it. The United States has been the biggest culprit in creating this crisis, and now we are the biggest laggard in responding to it.

The atmosphere is not our dumping grounds.

And just because we fly the red, white, and blue doesn’t make us exempt from doing the right and the urgent thing.

© 2011 The Progressive
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/07/04-5

Can you not give it a rest on our Nations Birthday? If you don't like it move to Iran, North Korea or Palestine and let me know how it works for you.

Says the guy who hates the President more than most people on this site.

We are having a drought here in the midwest and Millions of acres burned in Arizona, new Mexico and Colorado. Camp fires and fireworks have been banned.

And some idiot down the street from me was shooting of fireworks tonight.

The 4th of July means nothing to them, they just like fireworks.
Some people are just idiots.

Who cares. It's a free country is it not? They can do what they want. Who needs laws or our constitution.

Nope, no kicking out unless you have to go too. It is as American as the flag to dislike different aspects of this country and to complain about them. No one tries to kick you out for your "dislikes" that you so proudly expound on whenever you get ready.

And he has some valid points in the OP. This country is by no means a "saint" when it comes to our treatment of people along the way either here or abroad.

We have to accept our faults as a country in order to fix them someday.

question 1:

Is it possible for a SINGLE entity to have a 'collective' role in human events?



question 2: The last birthday party you attended, did the host make a point of focusing on the failures and harm caused by the guest of honor?

The Gettysburg Address
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
November 19, 1863

On June 1, 1865, Senator Charles Sumner commented on what is now considered the most famous speech by President Abraham Lincoln. In his eulogy on the slain president, he called it a "monumental act." He said Lincoln was mistaken that "the world will little note, nor long remember what we say here." Rather, the Bostonian remarked, "The world noted at once what he said, and will never cease to remember it. The battle itself was less important than the speech."



Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

"and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. "

News Flash

It has perished time of death 911

Of course it had been sick for some time. The illness began around the vietnam war were we killed over a million outright and around five million in the entire area due to the conditions of war.

I think its interesting that you think people CAN'T love their country and dislike their government. Have you lived overseas and talked to foreigners who visited or lived in America and had them tell you what a great country it is? In fact I can honestly say I never talked to anyone that had been to America that didn't think it was a great place to go or live.

I try to avoid the slums and ghettos of the third world and use an apples to apples compariosn.

If I need to explain this it would be canada and western europe.

Were america once aspired to provide a descent way of life to the majority it now compares itself to India or China.

Hey were better off than those Chinese peasants that have to work twelve hours a day in a work camp arent we?

We are well on our way to that and it is being enabled by those who hide behind the flag.

News Flash

On vacation all week so you can look forward to my wisdom all week in between painting, cuttng firewood and laying about on the shores of lake erie.

speaking of wich

I remember how polluted that lake was when I was a child before we had an EPA and yesterday I saw a bald eagle flying along the shore and we were sitting in front of a cliff that had cliff swallows nesting all over it. So nice to see when government works and maintains a safe environment for man and beast.

Work camps in places like China and North Korea exist because of the totalitarian ideals set forth by the communist vision of a nation.

99% suffer .. But you know.. They all suffer equally.. So I guess if you aspire to suffer just the same as everyone else I can then begin to understand the ideas that the leftists hold so dear.

The actual funny part of the whole socialism/communism is better than capitalism is that the top one percent you all whine and complain about don't disappear.

Marx referred to the dictatorship of the proletariat which means everyone has the same opportunity to suffer equally..

Let the obstreperous Stalinists be the first to give away their property for the betterment of the state.

Well I am wondering why we do so much business with China why do we support that form of government?

I think to say china is communist is a semantic argument.

its not the teachers or union workers that invest in China it is our capitalistic leadership.

It wasnt the Chinese that built that country it was western capital.

Oh what a mess we can build them up so we can wage another cold war and justify our parisitic military industrial establishment.

Who is talking about slums and third world? Are you saying Japan is 3rd world?

Glad to report that the death was exaggerated and we are all here
still alive and kicking. Sorry you are not feeling well though.

As your unofficial mingle2 physician, I must counsel immediate and
complete bedrest. You may need exotic antibiotics. I am sorry it
is not healing well. Perhaps you should take a couple of nubile
young vixens and call me in the morning. Definitely isolate yourself
until it passes.

If you find more than two nubile young vixens email me immediately!

If most americans thought as I did we would be able to ACTUALLY become the country that most Americans THINK we already are.

I disagree.

No big suprise at all

This is OUR country. It does not belong to the government.

It belongs to the people.