Whither America?

I miss America. It was a great country; full of hope, ambition, innovation, and confidence. When I was a young boy, we had been the reason that World War II ended the way it did. We had a beautiful future ahead of us. We saw a great future under Pax Americana. We were self assured, movers and shakers, striding about the world like Titans. We provided the cash and the machines to rebuild Europe, to drag Japan and Germany out of the devastation instigated by their leaders, and provided the counter to the threat of Soviet communism. We were building an interstate highway, nuclear power plants, and a world seemed to look on us in awe.

Then, somehow, we became "the ugly American". We were too pushy, we were overbearing, we demanded things be done our way. We were resented. The world thought we wanted to re-shape the world in our own image.

And then came Vietnam. And the grassroots (and not so grassroots) driven political protest 60's. It set parent against child, sibling against sibling, youth against all. My America was tarnished. My peers sided with my enemies. In the late50's, we began to peel away the veneer and what we found was ugly; the racism, the inequality and more. Things that had festered since the birth of the nation. As we tried to deal with it, as we tried to live up to the standards we thought we should, things began to fall apart. We became a nation of factions, each fighting for dominance, or at least a larger share of the "pie."

It had to be done.

Now I watch it shrink, much as the British Empire shrank after World War I. Much as the Roman Empire shrank as it became divided and lost control of itself. America's leaders now oversee its decline. Willingly, it would seem.

Instead of pushing back against our critics, we accepted the criticism and tried to change, tried to be liked again. Any smart person knows you cannot please everyone all the time. But we still tried. We also tried to buy that love with foreign aid and seeking compromise amongst antagonists (resulting in both sides resenting our input). Countries began playing us against the Soviets, collecting from both sides. And we kept pouring blood and treasure into the bottomless pit that is world politics. Why? Because we liked being the Top Dog, we liked being looked up to. We were going to be what no other great nation had ever been, a benevolent and loved oppressor.

I don't know how we can get back the old America, the America of my youth, maybe there was too much wrong with it and it was all illusion.

But I still miss it.

And now, when we kill a bad guy in a foreign land, the ACLU (with concurrence from Libertarian Ron Paul) berates the administration for violating the bad guy's rights under the Constitution. While I understand the ACLU's position, I disagree that his right to due process was violated. The Constitution's power stops at our borders.