I love America! Really there is nothing more that needs to be said, but there is so much more that I can say. Therefore, I will say a little bit more. I have been patriotic since I was about ten years old. I have always loved history and when studying history, you can’t help but learn about how civilizations start and how governments become a necessary part of each civilization. The United States of America has become one of the greatest nations in the world in a very short time. That must mean something! We have our flaws like any other, but in my opinion if you average everything out, we are more efficient, just, fair, democratic, diplomatic, humanitarian, and opportunistic than any other country in the world.

America is the only country you can raise your flag in your front yard as merely a citizen to show your patriotism yet have the freedom of protest to turn around the next day and burn the very same flag. Does that mean I agree with flag burning? ABSOLUTELY NOT! If I see you doing it, I will become angry and want to be violent even though I wont. But you can legally burn it none-the-less.

Only in America can a kid, whose dad is sitting in prison and mother working in a factory, sit and dream about running the country as president and can someday actually do it. That dream is no longer dependant on that child’s race or gender either.

We have so many rights in America I don’t think I even have to go in to that.

People complain because our politicians are immoral and have affairs. Well, stop and think about that for a minute. This is one of the only countries where we have things so wonderful that the best thing we can complain about is what the people who make our laws are doing when they aren’t making laws. I mean think about that for a minute. In most countries people are scared to even complain about what an elected official is doing in his official capacity due to possibly being killed, let alone complaining about their social life. Now much of this was written long ago, and today we have politicians who aren’t making laws any more, they don’t do much. Fortunately, this country has as solution for that. We can vote them out. The same goes for a president who might have colluded with a foreign government to affect the election. We can vote him out or impeach him.

Borrowing an expression from a college student’s thesis statement I once read: “We are Americans, no hyphens, solely an American. If you trace back your roots none of us could just say we are American! If you want to get technical I am an Irish-Anglo-French-American, but in America we all stand as equals as nothing more than an AMERICAN!” There are those, who originally settled here though, we call them Native Americans. There is a tie for the two worst things this country has ever done. The two are, 1) Stealing land from and killing MOST of those Native Americans who were here first, and 2) going to Africa and ripping families apart so that we could enslave their people. I can’t talk about all our greatness without mentioning our terrible flaws. We are learning though. Slowly we are trying to bring ourselves back from these horrific episodes in our history. I just hope we aren’t currently back sliding.

The USA is a very young country. In this country, if you walk into an antique store, you see things that are 50 years old. In Europe, they laugh at that: antiques are 500 years old. And in Egypt, they laugh at that: antiques are 5000 years old.

The USA has the best and cheapest meat in the world. Everywhere else in the world, meat is very expensive, and not very tasty. (But I hear there’s a sale on British beef jerky these days!) And if you want fresh meat in Tibet, you must follow the stream of blood in the street back to the sidewalk where they slaughtered the yak! I’m not kidding!

Cheap gasoline is also taken for granted. In most countries, gas is 2-3 times more expensive. We also take our telephone system for granted, and our cheap and consistent electrical power. In China and Asia, many cities use different outlets and voltages. And power outages occur roughly every hour there.

In America we complain our children don’t have the education they need. In many countries children get NO education. Granted, it’s always a good idea to keep striving for better. In recent years we have been falling behind in industry and education.

In short, we have it good. There is nothing wrong with seeing what is there and wanting to make it better. That is one of the principles this country was founded on, but it upsets me when people take what we have for granted. The grass is always greener on the other side, but if you really look it’s not so bad here. If you don’t like something in this country, try and help fix it. Don’t just complain. That doesn’t help anything. People think they can’t make a difference, but you can. There have been numerous movements over the years where someone said they couldn’t make a difference as one person, but then someone else came along with those same ideas who believed he could make a difference alone: Jefferson, Washington, Henry, Adams, Lincoln, Roosevelt, King, Lennon, Kennedy, they all made a difference as one person who gathered others with the same beliefs. You can do it, if you really want to do it.