America Bashing No More – How a Liberal Canadian Became a Conservative US Patriot
It was all fun and speculation and Cat Stevens and dancing. It was the 60s all over again. It was, “If I knew then what I know now.” It was a far off concept of peace and giving it a chance. Just give it a chance. I want to go on record with something that gave me a chance. America. America gave me a chance. And there are reasons that, amidst all the left wing garbage thrown about, that America has made me proud. America has stopped me bashing her. America has changed my opinion. To be honest I have never been an America basher, but I have been to Europe several times and growing up outside the U.S. lends me to a certain perspective on America different that the one I have now. I have always loved this country, watched NCAA football and basketball, visited Florida as a child, but never really loved this place as home. I do now and here are a few reasons why.
It has the best and the worst. It provides opportunity and demands responsibility. It is open and clean and safe and glorious. It provides for its citizens over the vastest of spaces. It helps its neighbors and never asks for thanks. In 1980 a bunch of college hockey players won the gold medal at the winter Olympics in Lake Placid. Aero Smith lives here. Women like Ann Coulter and Pam Anderson. Top surgeons, the U.N., Chicago, Interstate Highways, freedom, shipping, manufacturing, sales, television, public swimming pools, national parks, friendly people, every nationality in the world, great food from everywhere, available anywhere, all the time, twenty-four hours a day.
With this success of a nation comes a condition I am calling Crowes. As in ‘I got Crowes’, or ‘She’s Crowin’ you’. Chris Robinson, lead singer of the alt-hippie, we use to be super-cool rock band, The Black Crowes, who since marrying Kate Hudson has managed to drop from the music radar, while his wife Kate, daughter of Goldie Hawn and stepdaughter of Kurt Russell, by all standards, a woman of privilege, pounds away anytime a microphone is put in her face with more public self loathing. It is time to stop hating for no reason at all. This country is great enough to allow people to speak who should not and would not be allowed to do so elsewhere. Hating yourself is allowed, and so is expressing yourself but seriously Kate, it is, like, so 2000, don’t you think. I wouldn’t be caught dead in that attitude.
You see America takes people in from other places that wield machetes, and socialism, hatred and history and creates Brooklyn gold. And America does it over and over again. If you want to come, chances are you can. These people are good. They believe in things, and ideas and themselves. When your birthplace fails you in whatever way you deem it to have, the United States is here. Desire is part of the make up, heart and courage and morality.
I’m not sure if people do not understand, nor do I, the sacrifice the people of this country make for their beliefs; ideas of freedom and liberty; of humanity and decency. These are strange propositions to some and difficult concepts to deal with for others. Unlike those others though, there is no rest for America. No comfort in winning. Bronze can take the day off. The expectations are higher for Gold. The bar is raised. And it is good. People here play golf for a living. And teach and administer and build and dream and create and write and fix and mend and invent. And it all matters. It isn’t against anything. Measured against your self, alone. The dollar is the dollar. Monday is always a new week and the market will be open. Get up, shake the dust off and give ‘er.
Never in the history of the world has their ever been such a generous nation; generous towards other countries, and also with its’ own citizens. Citizens of America have the opportunity to live out their dreams and reap the rewards, the responsibilities and the consequences. And that has it’s own problems – often leading to a neo-conspiracy-quasi-liberal morality based in a confused sense of not deserving what one has. When dreams get realized, quickly, and wealth follows, wealth beyond the imagination of the individual, as so often realized by the Hollywood left, it often leads to media or extensions of positions that are also laden with this loathsome sentiment.
Kate Hudson’s latest rantings are a perfect example. She referred to Americans as ‘creatures’ and ‘it’s no wonder everyone hates us’. We say things like ‘ketchup’ and ‘excuse me, excuse me!!!” These statements of hatred seem simply to be what they are on the surface, but behind them is a much more dangerous message – a self-centered, camera friendly, invitation to validate Kate herself hidden as a realistic, rationalized and educated comment. Why? She feels and rightly so, unjustified in her success. To put others, whoever, say the President down, is actually a cry for attention, period. That is not to say that there are not valid points on all sides of any debate. But to knock down yourself and your country to make a point only serves to make the point that your country perhaps ought to actually not support you any further.
I was fortunate enough to emigrate here from Canada almost 8 years ago, and it was this country that gave me a place to go. When my grandfather needed to escape Europe, it was this country that took in his ship. The stories are many. Mine is no different that the rest. So while some like me find it difficult to hear stories of intelligence credibility, inquiries into suicides as if they were homicides, and questions of truth and motivations, take comfort in the fact that the intelligent citizen can see through the comments, suspicions, anger and hatred and actually learn more about our wailing accusers than they, in their current state, will ever learn about us.
Lest we forget what a fantastic place we Americans call home.
