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hlprmnky · 06-21-2003, 09:56 AM

220 years ago a bunch of rich white elites sat down and figured out a blueprint for the perfect nation. They didn't know anything about the future, but they knew themselves and they had seen plenty of both the greatest and the basest humanity has to offer, especially in the previous seven years of civil war.

Their design for a perfect democracy has survived the invention of aircraft, cars, computers, automatic weapons, and the atom bomb. New schools of economic thought have come into being, new political ideals have come and gone over entire continents. And still, the basic structure of their design remains intact, and the unquestioned envy of the world. For all the spite and ire levelled by the world at this or that particular administration, our government remains, as Churchill put it, "the worst system of government ever devised - with the exception of all other systems of government ever devised."

Even as we citizens of the USA bicker back and forth, and even as the pendulum of opinion swings wildly left and right in the popular debate, I wake up every morning in America positively convinced that the ideals and ideas of the framers of the Constitution are going to weather any storm we throw at them. Ashcroft isn't going to dismantle our freedoms, certainly not in perpetuity. Rumsfeld and Bush and Fleischer can only poorly REPRESENT our country to the world, they cannot change what the system IS or how it works in any significant degree.

And so, the process continues, and slowly, jerkily, sometimes a little retrograde on one front or another, sometimes leaping forward on one front or another, this Nation continues to march forward, tending toward better lives and more freedom and a richer promise of tomorrow for all, even when we have to scrap and fight and march and risk for it. Even though it is sometimes hard to see from the perspective of the individual awash in the minutiae of the moment, this is what I love about America.

Oh, also the fact that I don't have to buy a license for my TV (UK, I'm looking in your direction here...)

06-21-2003, 09:56 AM	#28 (permalink)
hlprmnky Upright Location: MN, USA	220 years ago a bunch of rich white elites sat down and figured out a blueprint for the perfect nation. They didn't know anything about the future, but they knew themselves and they had seen plenty of both the greatest and the basest humanity has to offer, especially in the previous seven years of civil war. Their design for a perfect democracy has survived the invention of aircraft, cars, computers, automatic weapons, and the atom bomb. New schools of economic thought have come into being, new political ideals have come and gone over entire continents. And still, the basic structure of their design remains intact, and the unquestioned envy of the world. For all the spite and ire levelled by the world at this or that particular administration, our government remains, as Churchill put it, "the worst system of government ever devised - with the exception of all other systems of government ever devised." Even as we citizens of the USA bicker back and forth, and even as the pendulum of opinion swings wildly left and right in the popular debate, I wake up every morning in America positively convinced that the ideals and ideas of the framers of the Constitution are going to weather any storm we throw at them. Ashcroft isn't going to dismantle our freedoms, certainly not in perpetuity. Rumsfeld and Bush and Fleischer can only poorly REPRESENT our country to the world, they cannot change what the system IS or how it works in any significant degree. And so, the process continues, and slowly, jerkily, sometimes a little retrograde on one front or another, sometimes leaping forward on one front or another, this Nation continues to march forward, tending toward better lives and more freedom and a richer promise of tomorrow for all, even when we have to scrap and fight and march and risk for it. Even though it is sometimes hard to see from the perspective of the individual awash in the minutiae of the moment, this is what I love about America. Oh, also the fact that I don't have to buy a license for my TV (UK, I'm looking in your direction here...)