Bunker Mulligan "Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry." ~Mark Twain

Sarah has attracted a persistent antagonist. She has handled it quite well.

One complaint the antagonist had was about her belief that American lives are more important than the lives of people from other countries. I agree with Sarah. The reason is one of relevance. People in this country share something with me that those in other countries don’t. People who want to denigrate that opinion need only ask themselves (honestly) whom do they cheer for in Olympic events.

One reason I feel this way about America and Americans is that I’ve paid attention over the last decades at how people in other countries think and behave. The one thing that strikes me most clearly about how we differ is what we see in rallies supporting or protesting something.

When you see images from other cultures, what do they carry as a symbol? Most of the time there will be large posters with the image of some individual. In the US, that is almost never the case. In fact, any image displayed will typically be an anti-message–Cheney with a Hitler mustache, for example.

After 9/11, you didn’t see Americans carrying around huge photos of Bush. You saw Americans displaying flags. That doesn’t happen anywhere else but here. This country was founded on the principle that no single person is more important than another. We celebrate this country and its people, not The Supreme Leader. Even campaign posters eschew photographs.

I don’t care to see the rest of the world be just like us. What a boring place it would be. Nor do I want the US to be like France. We’ve grown beyond what Europe has to offer. We are different, and we are better. If you consider that jingoistic, enjoy your opinion. I enjoy mine.