Conservatives can stand in front of cameras weeping "I want MY country back," and I certainly have an equal right to take you to school on MY America. You, Mr. HEAD, certainly do not have a monopoly on the definition of "America," and to assert that you do (as your bullshit implies) says more about your ignorance and arrogance than any defensible definition of "America" based on precedent. Clearly, your conception of history is flawed due to its extreme conservative nature; history is not the static story that you subscribe to. It's a "river," constantly flowing, twisting and turning as new evidence bears upon interpretation and reveals new meanings and understandings, thus infinitely nuanced. You, Mr. HEAD, are free to repose in the comfort of your conservative, reductionist view that (as you claim): "Our" America at least has a historical precedent. You may pick at its flaws, talk it down all you wish, but cannot deny the objective fact that it is our philosophy that built America from a handful of of disunited colonies to the most powerful and prosperous nation on earth in its short 233 year history. What a gross and self-serving statement! I'm laughing out loud! By asserting such a swweping claim you close your mind to the broader processes of history as the river flows. I'm certainly not surprised, though, for people such as you prefer the sanitized, "red, white and blue" ("rah rah") version. That may serve you, but to many minority and labor class Americans it's not the real story. I'd certainly quarrel with your claim that "our philosophy" built America. Is it too inconvenient for you to acknowledge that the antecedents of the political philosophy that provided the catalyst for revolutions were well established in the thought of European thinkers of the Enlightenment? Truncated, self-serving conceptions of history designed to reinforce conservative ideology typically embrace very selective elements of the historical record. Ultimately it purges inconvenient truths to yield an interpretation of history to sustain an ideological house of cards. In the process, conservatives have celebrated the "unum" and condemned the "pluribus." In a nation whose collective identity is based largely on the immigrant experience and a society that is inherently multicultural, the GOP has defined itself as the antithesis of what most of us know and believe that we are. Fiction? I respectfully suggest you reconsider your truncated construct of MY nation's history. I suggest you begin by going back to school. This time, pay attention. | 
