I've just finished reading "To America" by Stephen Ambrose. What a beautiful love song to this country. If you haven't had a chance to check this book out, Ambrose uses it to give his personal reflections on the history he's written. He talks about how much the country has changed since he started paying attention to it. He talks about how his opinion on events changed as his research gave him a new insight. He talks about his love and admiration for Dwight Eisenhower and distaste for Richard Nixon.

In the end he sums it by saying:

"Consider what the United States has accomplished since 1776. We began with some severe problems--slavery, the condition of women in the body politic, the terrible way we treated Native Americans, using our natural resources like they were inexhaustible, then colonialism in Panama and the Philippines,a virtual ban on immigration from outside Western Europe, and so much more. Nor have we solved them all--racism is still with us, as is sexism . We now face new foreign threats--terrorism, weapons of mass destruction in the hands of terrorist.

But we've accomplished so much in these areas and others, both at home and abroad, that we are right to remain the most optimistic of people. We've made the world a better place and we will continue to do so. Our American Spirit comes from the Founding Fathers, was developed by Jackson, Grant, and both Roosevelts, taken abroad. That Spirit got us through September 11, 2001, and it will see us through the future."

It gives me a moment like Carrie had in the last episode of Sex and the City when she says "What if I had never met you?" What if there had been no America? For all it's faults, for all it's inability to really grapple with problems that it can solve,

America has taken some tough stands and fought some good fights. On this blog and elsewhere in the liberal world, I often despair for my country. This book, like Bobby Kennedy's book, reminds me that there's a lot to hope for and a lot to look forward to and we can be a part of making this country in our own image. It's a difficult, painful fight but it is worth it more than we can even imagine.

I now return you to your regularly scheduled cynicism, drug references, and fart jokes.