Re (1): A subcontinental identity does not sacrifice narrower national, or rather ethnocentric identities. There are no ambiguities in EU countries rejecting the proposed EU constitution and yet retain the EU. France, in particular, cannot afford the CAP outside the EU nor can it ditch the CAP for political reasons. Most EU countries know that without the EU each and every one of them will face obstacles to economic progress. No its not the Euro but harmonisation of policies that encourage trade and economic co-operation. The proposed EU constitution couldn’t win because the average voter saw that as a diminution of their sway on more accessible politicians. Indeed, Merkel and Blair have been freaking everybody out with their plans to exhume the constitution and pass it off as a government level agreement that bypasses the referendum process.

Re (2): I have always objected to Reagan’s simplistic classification of the USSR as THE ‘evil’ empire, implying opponents must be the forces for ‘good’ regardless of the latter’s modus operandi. All countries have histories that are mixes of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ because that is the essence of humanity – we choose. All countries also gloss over the bad bits of history and eulogise the parts that cast them in a good light. Nothing peculiarly American about that.

Re (3): The Taliban are recruited from the Pashtun people who straddle the Afghanistan-Pakistan border areas. Their ideology often reflects Pashtun tribal customs going back generations. In that context, the Taliban are part and parcel of the local landscape. It is interesting that the genesis of the Taliban was Pakistan’s ISI which is a misbegotten child of CIA black ops when the Soviets first walked into Afghanistan. They are sustained today by ISI political cover and Saudi money for the madrassas. ISI is often referred to as a state within a state and it regards the Taliban as their insurance to stave off return of civilian control of government in Pakistan and attempts by the country’s regular military to defang it.

Re (4): I am currently doing a research consultancy re public policy development in India, so have been doing quite a few trips and getting to know both its peoples, history and characteristics. I don’t really understand your animosity towards that country. Sure it is poor – a direct consequence of 200 years of colonialism. The country would never have been coveted as the jewel in the crown of the Empire if it wasn’t the fourth most prosperous country in the 16th and the 17th centuries. Socioeconomic and consequent political inequalities and inequities exist in many other countries which have far more developed systemic infrastructure to address such issues. Sixty years ago the Indian middle class was estimated to be 12% of a much smaller population. Today it is 27% of 1.1bn people and rising. The point I was trying to make is that such inequalities would not stand in the way of continuing economic growth given the size of it. From the Australian perspective we tend to see India as an important geopolitical player not simply in the region but the world. In my frequent trips there, I haven’t felt it to be repressive at all. It has a very lively news media, both print and internet, and a thriving blogosphere. There is indeed unrest in many provinces but a lot of the unrest is really the have nots storming the Bastille. Politicians are starting to realise that addressing inequalities is a political imperative. They are not doing that very well yet but the realisation is there. Recent federal and state elections have unseated many of them. Australia also sees the country as a stable political democracy which will, nevertheless, follow a path that serves its own strategic national interests. In fact you would be amazed how many Australians are choosing to take up employment in that country particularly in the gap year many take between secondary and tertiary studies.

I don’t hate Americans and I don’t think most people do. I have worked there before as an Australian Federal Public Servant with the OECD and the UN. I am not the only non American who realises that the 2004 election results were very close despite the fear mongering and mud slinging politics that dominated it. Nor am I very lonely among the global crowd that thinks the American dream can reassert itself. The world is crying out for leadership on a number of urgent issues from the USA and it wouldn’t be doing that if it was consumed by hatred for the country.

Again, simply excellent writing sir, and thank you from the bottom of my heart for writing something that speaks so powerfully to this issue from a Canadian perspective. I hope and pray it is as effective with other Canucks as it is with Americans reading this.

Great post. Very articulate and I love seeing people put their thoughts together like that, stay on issue and really deliver the goods. That being said, I read your post without highlighters and the like so I may have missed this point, but your points about Pelosi’s lack of interest in impeaching Bush notwithstanding, I think she is not advocating it HERSELF because of the inhernet conflict of interest it represents on her behalf.

If Bush, and hopefully Cheney, too, but you don’t know if he would leave at this point….were to be impeached, then Pelosi would be the President. As such, although your analysis and reasons for it are truly impressive, I think that is the real issue why SHE PERSONALLY is not looking for impeachment.

As for the original poster, the leaders of the founding fathers, Franklin, Hamilton, Jefferson, Washington, I think Adams, and I think Madison, were very spiritual but considered themselves to be deists, i.e. belief in an omniprecent God without the hoopla about the father, son and the holy Trinity of Christainity. The Jefferson Bible is a good example. That’s why God is not mentioned in the Constitution, but IS mentioned in the Declaration of Independance, if only as a reference to a univeral law.

It is sad to see these last few years the abrupt shift of politics so far to the “right” that moderate voices, and those on the left, are considered anathema to democracy and the Amercian Ideal. It takes Candadians and Europeans to right the course for us, I think. And it is nice to read that the legacy in which this country is based is appreciated and supported by non-US citizens.

1) I just lived with a French roomie. Voted Sarkozy, as it happens, but I know her general political views and by US terms she’s a flaming liberal. She told me that if it was a choice between France and the EU, she’d vote France and that she’s disturbed by the EU pushing in on French sovereignty. France agrees, since it voted down the constitution. Actually there does seem to be solid evidence that they care about nations.

2) There was a huge difference between the USSR and US during the cold war. Not even going there, but if you’re reduced to arguing they were both equally evil….

3) What you say about Afghanistan/Pakistan is half true (the core of the Taliban were seminary students from Pakistan, for example) but irrelevant to my argument. The Taliban wasn’t inevitable, by any means and the US abandoning Afghanistan did make a difference.

4) India: Most of the population lives in poverty, there are entire provinces that are effectively in revolt. India is a democracy, sure, but I wouldn’t get all misty eyed about it – there’s a ton of repression and fear involved in keeping India together. As for their economic miracle, as with China, the activity on the trade/outsourcing margins matters a hell of a lot. Take away even just the 6% you mentioned (which isn’t all of it) and you get a cascade through the economy that would be horrific. Some parts of the economy matter much more than other ones, and the parts that are involved in I/O functions with other countries are included. A lot of people don’t seem to get that.

And yeah, a lot of the world does hate America.

Aside: I used to have a friend, we worked at the same company. One day she bitched at me about our coworkers – this one was lazy, that was a snob, the other one was rude, etc… and they were all of them not very helpful to her.

My response was that I liked all of the people she dislike, and that when I asked them to help me I almost always got the help.

Wonder why?

And when I deal with people who need to change, I spend much more time on what’s best about them than what’s worth – on their ideals and aspirations and the good part of their self image. I don’t ignore the bad stuff (what the hell do you think I write about 364 days a year), but when you want change you need a model for positive change.

That model is there in America’s past, in its founding documents and in its ideals. Sure, there’s bad stuff too, no question. And one does need to recognize that. But the concentration needs to be not on the inevitability of sin, but on the possibility of taking the very best of America. And when holding out an image of what America can be, that’s what I do.

America’s come a long way – universal franchise, freeing the slaves, the Marshall plan, and so on. Those who seem only able to focus on the sins of America are as tiresome and incorrect as those who can see America as nothing but good.

And, more importantly, they undermine their own cause by incessantly focussing on the negative and not recognizing also the good.

Wait a second, hold the phone…if I’m redundant, I apologize; but last I looked, America is a continent that includes Canada, therefor Canadians are Americans.

And Americans wonder why they can drive people in the rest of the world crazy.

Except the world does not really ‘hate’ Americans, it simply gets very frustrated with its adolescent bully boy antics, its penchant to overreact, the arrogant hubris of American exceptionalism that can consider preemptive aggression as defence, Geneva Conventions as quaint, acts of torture as enhanced interrogation techniques, kidnappings of foreign nationals outside its borders for torture by proxies as extraordinary renditions and of course some remarkable Presidents, including Reagan and Bush II.

The world still associates the Statue of Liberty and Bill of Rights as being essentially American as much as it associates the principles of habeas corpus and right to trial by a jury of peers with Great Britain.

Happy Birthday America – the tide is turning and all the things that have gone so woefully wrong since the dawn of the 21st century are being exposed, debated, opposed and I have no doubt will be resolved to a degree.

Which candidates to date appeal to me as the next President? I like Kucinic though he has not a chance to win his party’s nomination to contest the Presidential elections. Edwards comes next. Gore is’nt running officially yet so I’ll ignore him. I know this much though – his commitment to ecological issues is genuine and have known that since 1996. Obama? Well, some of his policy proposals are too iffy, not just his plans to increase defence spending or his refusal to eschew nuclear attacks against non nuclear countries like Iran but also his half baked theories on health care reform, his defensive posture on where and why he got tested for aids and a certain unease when anybody uses religiosity in political posturings.

Then there is this from Ian:

“Truly, in the Cold War, America stood astride the word facing off against an evil empire. Reagan was right when he called the USSR evil – it was a totalitarian nightmare, and opposing it; keeping it in check, was the moral thing to do.”

I have a lot of problems with such dogmatic assertions. The Cold War was an imperial power struggle between two empires for global dominance, both equally evil. This is no defence of Stalin but Khrushchev had signalled the end of that period early in the post World War II era. Yes, the gulags persisted under hegemonistic stateism reinforced by not very transparent legal processes. Is that the definition of evil? Was that any worse than the allied bombings of civilians in Europe or the nuclear devastation unleashed on Japan when they were ready to surrender or the covert operations of the CIA across central and south America that unseated many democratically elected governments or the segregation that persisted in the south? There was no ‘morality’ involved in the nuclear arms race that relied on mutual assured destruction. It was lust for power, pure and simple, when countries were not given any other option but to choose between one or the other. That Manichean streak continues to haunt American political rhetoric and policies to this day.

Lets stop talking about the Taliban in Afghanistan as if they are alien invaders from outer space. They happen to be a local product albeit with support from across the Pakistani border but nurtured with covert sustenance from Pakistan’s ISI and Saudi money for madrassas to fan the flames of Wahhabi Salafism.

Another thing, North Americans seem to worry more about national identities being threatened by the European Union than the EU countries themselves. I wonder why. The EU is not the only paradigm of a non-homogeneous subcontinental identity. The world’s most populous democracy, India, has 23 (recognised) languages out of approximately 35 in the world, boasts 1.1bn people who are truly multi-ethnic, multi-lingual and multi-religious. In terms of purchasing power parity the country has the fourth largest GDP while geographically it is the seventh largest. And no, its not all call centres – they actually account for less than 6% of its GDP. I know Ian has reservations re India because of its social inequalities and a small middle class. That small middle class today is approximately 27% of its population and thats a heckuva ‘small’ number out of 1.1bn. Besides, the growth of the middle class is a result of economic development and growth and not the other way round.

(and don’t tell me about Ron Paul = the guy is anti-choice.)

Golly gosh, just imagine a pregnant woman eager to have the baby hearing, “I delivered 4,000 babies but I shoulda been an abortonist.”

Do tell us IF you ever find a candidate that you would agree with on every issue.

I want the America I grew up believing in back again.

It may never have existed in quite the gauzy or romantic way you describe, or the way I remember it. Maybe what I think America was is only what my Mama told me. But that’s not the point. The one I remember is very much like the one you described. And I do want it back.