Why do I love America?

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Fellow Conservative Brotherhood member Joseph C. Phillips asked us a question as part of research for a book he's working on. I thought long and hard about my answer and when I finally got to writing it it got kind of long. Being that I'm always looking for blog fodder I decided to share it with all of you good folk.

Why do I love America?

America, oh how I love thee. Let me count the ways. No really.

I don't know if I can really say that I love America but I sure do appreciate being here. A few years back I was returning from an overseas trip. As I waited to go through customs I took a look at the people around me. In the area where citizens and permanent residents were processed stood people from nearly every ethnic group on earth. I lost count of how many languages I heard spoken. And these people were all either American citizens or could be American citizens if they so chose. Anywhere else in the world the citizenry is pretty homogeneous.

That's what I appreciate about America. Anyone can belong if they want to. And if you don't want to that's okay just don't break the law (in general that's the way it works). America is a hodge podge of some of the best that the world has to offer (some of the worst too but we're only human).

In too many places there are laws that govern the privileged few and keep all of the outsiders in their place. And there are plenty of places where those that govern really couldn't care less about their citizens and it shows. Say what you will about the American judicial system but everybody at least gets their one phone call and a lawyer. And have you seen all of the pork that comes out of Congress? It's all about keeping the voting public happy so one can stay in office.

If the US was really as bad as some would like to believe then the likes of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton would have been disappeared a long time ago. The march on Washington would have ended up looking like this instead of this. And the various civil rights acts would never have come into being.

I can be whoever I want to be in America. I'm a Christian, a woman, black, I married outside of my group, I hold political beliefs that differ from those of a vast majority of my group. In a lot of places any one of these things would at best doom me to exist on the fringes of respectable society and at the worst get me killed. But in America it gets me a blog and people asking my opinion about all kinds of stuff. Warts and all there's no other place I'd rather be.

Yeah I'm an optimist. So sue me. I'll sue your litigious butt right back, this is America you can do stuff like that.

Update
Cobb: 100 Things I Love About America

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