2DREZQ

A few years ago I was/am a member of a Pakistan-centric site. I was there mostly for the intellectual workout, like going to the gym. What got annoying was not the anti-American bias, so much as the unreasoning aspect of it, and the hypocrisy of those pointing fingers.

I'm getting really tired of teaching U.S. history to those who cannot see past their own preconcieved ideas and cherished prejudices. That America came to be at all is a miracle. Political compromise was required to birth this nation. 'America' did not bring the evil of slavery to its' shores. But, just a few generations after our founding, we were willing to risk our existence as a nation and spend hundreds of thousands of lives to rid ourselves of it.

What risk of comparable worth has your country ever taken to improve itself?

We gathered our strength (and our Christian faith) and endured upheaval again a century later to bring civil rights to all citizens.

What has your nation endured to improve the lot of the downtrodden?

America is not a perfect nation, we're just better than all the others. Is that arrogant? Tough. Few people wish to see the character of their country denegrated. I suspect the character of those that do.

As to the conquest of this continent: Yes, we took it from the native people by force. No one denies that. This occurred at the end of thousands of years of human history during which there was no moral ambiguity in the concept of conquest. If you insist on judging the acts of previous generations by the moral standards of today, then no nation, people, or religion comes up clean. If you look back far enough, as a general rule, the ground you stand on is stained with the blood of those whom your forefathers took it from."