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******** "America."

I love my country. I'm proud of the amazing success which has been achieved by our emulation and alteration of old world democracy. I'm fascinated by the Capitalist experiment. I give a nod of thanks to our founding fathers who loved the idea of freedom (the quality or state of being free: as a : the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action b : liberation from slavery or restraint or from the power of another : INDEPENDENCE ), liberty (c : freedom from arbitrary or despotic control), and self-reliance (having confidence in and exercising one's own powers or judgment) that have allowed us to bloom into a meganation, a superpower, the lighthouse leading the way to civil and social growth. These things are America. The true nation of self-expression and the treaty between those who would protect that right.

However, George Bush and many powerful people want something different in their "America." Their country is one of wild religious fanaticism, governmental control of peoples' physical bodies, closed-book legislature, profit at the suffering of entire countries because they inherited the wrong religious scripts and oppression of any voice that speaks out against the leadership or its ethical culpability. These peoples' followers are well-moneyed men, oppressed poor who have swallowed the baited hook of his empty promises and your grandmother, your neighbor, your teacher. Good, well-meaning people who foolishly took things at face value, who didn't feel the desire to speak out about their personal freedoms. People who didn't want to sound like Communists just because they weren't comfortable with "In God We Trust" or "Under God" becoming part of national culture a mere 50 years ago. We did fine for 150 years without those slogans - 150 years, I might note, that witnessed the growth of this nation from a pitiable band of ragged freedom fighters into a beacon of hope as bright as the sun and envied by every other country in the world.

To hell with the despotic, theocratic military state that the Neo-Conservatives and their cronies want. If my rights as a reasonable person who cherishes what his country should be must be suffocated in order to keep standing a hollow shell, then this isn't America and it's not my home.