All this distress was not whipped up by any plan or any nefarious manipulation.
The millions of your countrymen who are feeling this way have not, for example, had their minds poisoned by vicious talk radio, blanketing the country and ceaselessly purveying slanders against our leaders. Indeed, most of us who feel this distress have felt anguished by a sense of betrayal by the American media that -until very recently""has simply ignored what we see as the elephant in the room, the rise to power of evil forces that are unraveling the goodness of America.
People, in fact, have had to create their own media -like this site, opednews.com""in order to find a place to discuss the fearsome reality they perceive.
Perhaps it is not our perceptions that stand most in need of explanation.
After all, opinion polls (and plenty of anecdotal evidence) suggest that most of the people in the world would resonate with the feelings those people quoted above have expressed. That includes in particular those countries whose people have long held most positive feelings toward the United States""countries that for generations have regarded America as a friend.
With them, too, the feelings of distress and distrust cannot be explained by inflammatory political leaders. It's not just in the land of Freedom Fries that people have felt frightened and angered by our current leadership. In Great Britain, too""the country whose leader contributed most to providing international cover for our president's adventures in preventive war""most of the people see our current rulers in terms far more like those in the passages above, than as you do.
Is it not, then, your support for this American leadership that needs to be examined?
In The Declaration of Independence, our Founders advocated "a decent respect for the opinion of mankind."
Which is to say, it is not a sign of moral virtue to alienate and antagonize and frighten the peoples of the world. And which is also to say that when your countrymen and the traditional friends of your country combine to say that something is terribly and dangerously wrong with the rulers you have empowered, perhaps it's fitting and proper to consider seriously the possibility that they are onto something important.
Loyalty is a virtue. But should not one's highest loyalty always be not to any particular authorities or to any political party, but to an enduring standard of the Good.
About that phrase, "under God," that's in our Pledge of Allegiance""doesn't it mean that we as Americans acknowledge that we must hold our country to a standard higher than just what our most powerful people say is true and right, a standard higher than the flag? If it doesn't mean that, then just what does it mean?
And if it does mean that, then perhaps the fear and anger and despair and pain of so many of your countrymen about how power is being wielded in our land are signs that it is time to re-align your allegiance to that higher standard.
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