The Christian Church has destroyed Christianity and, in similar fashion, Americans are destroying the promise of America. The rhetoric of Bush's "Christian" supporters is as removed from the ideals espoused by Jesus in the Gospels as Bush's own rhetoric on Freedom are distanced from the concepts of freedom first articulated in the 1700s. The promise and the original premise of America, however, maintain their power and allure in the minds of many oppressed people seeking to gain access to the liberal ideals upon which the American Revolution was based. America's actions at home and in the world, which so often belie these ideals, however, threaten to destroy any hope that the world will respond to the promise of freedom that America pledged to take to all humankind in the Chief Executive's recent Second Inaugural. One need only compare Mr. Bush's second address with President Lincoln's to be able to grasp the ferocity of the frontal assault being waged against America's true greatness. America emerged during the Enlightenment and to millions of people since the 18th century, the American experience represented the fruition of Enlightenment's political ideals. In historical context, those ideals were awe-inspiring and remarkable. Remarkable because the philosophers conceived of secular humanity in terms of the individual rather than the class or caste. These thinkers hardly appear to be enlightened to 21st Century thinking. How does a slave-holder write that "all men are created equal" and inspire the entire western world with his pen while consigning millions of people to a permanent condition of servitude? But, we miss the point if we engage in presentism to the point that obscures the extraordinarily progressive concepts of equality and freedom articulated by Jefferson even if he, as a man, did not measure up to his own ideals.

Similarly, the ideals of a free market system proposed by Adam Smith struck at the heart of an inherently corrupt system totally controlled by the upper classes to the detriment of the ordinary working people. Along with a truncated form of democracy, America aspired to provide every person the economic freedom to live a life pursuing "happiness." Observing the evils of corporate America today, one could handily discard the whole notion of capitalism as a fraudulent system that repeats the innate evil of the pre-modern economic system. But, in the 18th Century, Smith was a radical thinker who contributed to the eventual downfall of despotism in Western Europe. Jefferson and Smith each wrote their most famous publications in 1776, the Spirit of which America is supposed to represent. Those ideals and the hope they gave to the oppressed make America unique in its contribution to the political and economic evolution of western civilization. That contribution cannot be eradicated historically without significant revisionism but the promise of those concepts is dying and that death may be unavoidable, so corrupt have they become under the crass imposition of America's economic and military might in the larger world. Americans have met the enemy and it is us. What began as a revolutionary society 230 years ago is now the ancien régime. America is the oppressor. America leads the world in its efforts to thwart revolutionary movements in cultures far more oppressive than what the English imposed on us. America, on the one hand, thinks that money is power and that money is the answer to all the world's problems; yet, on the other hand, "Christian" America begrudges virtually every dime that goes to help the needy peoples of the planet. They will give a few dollars for a cause celebre like the recent tsunami---especially if there are a lot of western tourists affected-- but are loathe to even acknowledge a tragedy like Rwanda. Not sexy enough, we may suppose.

So, America, the concept, is great and one of history's great experiments. America, the political reality, hoards its earthly treasures and has lost its soul. The America of George W. Bush is anathema to the America of the community leaders who are dedicating their lives to helping the poor and trying to make the lot of humankind more tolerable. The America of the major political parties is cynical and prostitutes itself for a couple of bucks to finance an absurd, negative campaign ad. The Party volunteers who work countless hours for the humanitarian ideals of a truly democratic society are worthy of our admiration and emulation. One must be cautious when asked to define one's nation as good (or evil). In hard times a Manichean worldview attracts too many of us because it is simple. It is also simplistic. The plutocrats running America's government and the corporate minions of Satan controlling the global economy taint everything American. Who can blame the world, excepting our lapdog Tony Blair, for despising us? But, it would be instructive if the larger world could also see that nearly half of our population rejected Bush and the ungodly holy war against Islam. That rejection was not a simple matter of preferring Mr. Kerry to Bush. For most of us voting against Bush, it was a personal crusade. We bristle at what we see our nation doing. In April, 1968, the day after Dr. King's murder, I was forced to detour on my way home from a class at my college. The detour sent me through the most predominantly black section of Birmingham. It was surreal for everyone in America that day but, oh my god BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA!! I found myself wanting to stand on my car and shout to the angry masses that I was horrified at what had happened to MLK and that I, as a good little liberal white boy, was on "their" side. I feel like that now in regard to the world. I want to walk through Europe and Britain proclaiming my abhorrence of the track America is on in its efforts to mold the world in our image. I want Muslims to know that I am not their enemy nor do I see them as the threat perceived by the American religious right. Much of my anger results from my continuing devotion to our liberal heritage and the extent to which that heritage is being obliterated in the communal world consciousness. My contribution to America's evil incursions in the rest of the world is not that I support any of it; rather, it rests in the fact that I do not exhume our revolutionary heritage and take to the streets risking my life for the sake of the many thousands that our system is killing on a daily basis throughout the world. As I write this, it occurs to me that maybe I am the enemy, the one without the necessary body parts to take a stand outside the voting booth. If I were a warrior my moral place would be with the insurgents. Instead, I try to teach diversity to teenagers who do not hear me because they are waiting for their next text message. I fret and strut behind my lectern and then go to a comfortable, liberal dinner party and hound the conservatives---who at least have the courage of their "convictions." I am the Gentile ignoring the trains headed East.

Mason Myatt
Birmingham, AL