Tom, that's simply not true. I've lived here as long as you have, thought about it as much as you have, and that is utter bilge. And instead of automatically assuming everyone else is crazy, deluded, or sinister, perhaps you should be asking yourself why you should somehow be able to see the world in a way denied to everyone else. Do you really see yourself as infallible?

What we do have growing in this country is a pathological and increasingly influential subculture of paranoia that finds it necessary to explain its disappointments and shortcomings as some sort of insidious internal treachery. Listen to yourselves, you've been sold out at Versailles, stabbed in the back by domestic traitors. And I'm not simply reflecting your paranoia, because that subculture is proud of its fantasies and is declaring them publicly and organizing itself to communicate them to the entire nation, and the world, as self-evident truth. Even questioning that assertion is seen as a treasonous act by those that hold it. As far as I'm concerned, that's cult behavior.

It's one thing to say that there are serious problems and errors in national policy, a statement even I'm willing to concede has some merit, and another to blame them on some self-generating meme that is propagating from a culture of evil. That's Nazis and Jews all over again, and it scares the shit out of decent people. Everyone believes some things aren't working out the way they should. That's natural and wholesome. We may not agree on what those things are, and that's natural, and wholesome too. But blaming them on a scapegoat is the ultimate obscenity.

As for national unity and other virtues requiring a foundation that a nation's citizens believe their nation is good, and deserves to exist and prosper, that is precisely what every dictator has attempted to inculcate in his followers to justify his crimes, and why hearing it makes my flesh crawl. No one culture deserves to prevail, it must earn the right to survive and flourish, and it is the duty of every citizen to help his culture earn it by expecting his culture to continue to improve; not simply accept it's intrinsic superiority and insist everyone else falls short. That is a perversion of patriotism; an insult to true love of country.

I love my country the way I love my home town, or the way I love my house. I do not love it because it is the best, or even better, than any other. I love it because it is my home. It is where I was born; it made me who I am and taught me what I know. I lived there long enough to appreciate its virtues, and learn its shortcomings, and to see that the former outweigh the latter, at least, in my opinion. I love it because of its familiarity to me, my intimate knowledge of its complexity and subtlety, and because the best years of my life were spent there.

Because I love my country does not mean I must hate another, or I cannot love another. It does not even necessarily mean I must love it more than I love any other, although I do. I love my country not because it is better or superior to anyplace else, or because I’m convinced God blessed it more than any other place, or because it gives me an excuse to despise another. I love it because it is mine and has become a part of me. I love my country, and will honor and defend it, but I do not worship it. That is not love, it is simply wickedness and sycophancy, a reason to hate others, and I will not countenance it, and I will certainly not forgive it in my fellow countrymen.