Okay, maybe I'm a bit defensive about patriotism. Maybe I'm a bit tired of a poisonous sub-culture that is trying to eradicate everything that is good about this country. The fact that the sight of a flag automatically brings to someone's mind Custer, the BATF, and Timothy McVeigh instead of Iwo Jima, American soldiers marching through liberated Europe, the surface of the Moon, and the single symbol of hope for many nations and immigrants throughout history, proves my point.

The American flag makes people uncomfortable. Why? Surely, when looked at objectively through history there are far more positive things associated with it than negative. Then why does the negative cloud everyone's vision?

I know why.

In many nations, school children are taught sanitized versions of history wherein their own country is pictured as constantly blameless and virtuous, while unpleasant truths are hidden. Witness Japan's treatment of WWII until recently. This is not a good idea. However, we have gone too far in the other direction. Our children are taught that the United States is oppressive, warlike, and a cancer on the Earth through all of its history. Every other culture, regardless of merit, is raised over ours as superior. My daughter was not taught about the American Revolution until eighth grade, but could name every Indian tribe in Old California in third grade. She was taught about Egypt, and Africa, Central America and ancient Rome. She was taught about the Incas and the Mayans. She was taught about India, and the South Seas.

Until eighth grade, if not for me and her own reading, she would not have known who Jefferson was, Hitler was, the Battle of Britain, and the principles on which this country was founded. She would not have known of any presidents earlier than Kennedy, except for Washington and Lincoln. The Civil War was not touched in school, except for extensive units on slavery.

In colleges, the negative history and national self-loathing pumped into children is ramped up until it is almost ludicrous. It is only on college campuses that a teacher of American children can still proudly wear the badge of "Marxist."

No other nation formally trains its children to believe that their nation is inferior and corrupt, that the word "Americana" is a joke, that the values their grandparents held were at best quaint, and at worst, evil. That religion isn't the church down the road, but the Inquisition. That the Founding Fathers were only rich slave holders. That flying a flag is a sign of moral corruption and simple-mindedness, but that burning one is an act of moral and intellectual superiority.

And of course, the tenets of socialism are drummed into their heads constantly. Freedom means nothing to a hungry man. Property is theft. The rich got that way by exploiting the poor.

Is it any wonder that our nation is losing the momentum of the righteous anger generated by the destruction of thousands of civilians in the center of our greatest city?

(So solid is the training in hatred of America that the last sentence is certain to generate the automatic response, "what about the thousands who died when we attacked Iraq? Or Bosnia? Or Viet Nam?")

Responding like Pavlov's dogs, in a few weeks the citizens of this nation will again be uncertain, guilty, and ashamed of their earlier patriotism. Ready to assume a position of moral inferiority to nations whose citizens reach their highest achievement as landfill for the palaces of their rulers.