1) a woeful ignorance of the documented facts and patterns of U.S. policy and action over the past 200 plus years,* ORAmerica should be a beacon for the rule of law and for justice and equity; instead America has taken to exempting herself from compliance with the standards she demands of others. Her history reveals continual efforts to micromanage the world in pursuit of her own agendas (resource acquisition, markets, security, etc., etc.). She has repeatedly violated core values in that pursuit and has lost the confidence of the world and of many of her own citizens for whom the rhetoric of good intentions and special justifications has become transparently specious. The evidence overwhelms the rhetoric—except for those who seeing, choose to see not, and hearing, choose to hear not.
2) a tragic acceptance of American justification for her many conspiratorial, misguided interventions into the affairs of sovereign nations and peoples.*
Yes, America has much to be proud of, but to pretend that shameful actions do not exist is to insolate America from her only hope for safety and longevity—the hope that America can trust in God by returning to democratic values and principles. Otherwise, this great hope for a better world will become just one more voice crying from the dust of dead and dismembered empires.
By the way: True patriotism is to expect and demand integrity, both domestically and abroad. It is not to excuse, discount, or ignore failures and hypocrisies in order to propagandize an image of goodness and superiority.
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[* A small sampling of facts and patterns worth studying and remembering: Native American and African-American treatment, past and present; Hawaii 1893; Cuba 1898; Philippines 1899; Nicaragua 1909; Honduras 1912; Japanese & Japanese-American internment 1940s; Iran 1953; Guatemala 1954; South Vietnam 1963; Cambodia 1970; Chile 1973; Indonesia/East Timor 1975; Grenada 1983; Panama 1959-89; Afghanistan 1980s to present; Iraq 1960s to present, etc., etc.]
