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Happy Fourth, everyone!
Jul. 4th, 2010 09:55 amThere are a lot of things that bother me about my country, but there are a lot of things that make me proud of it too.
So many of our deficiencies are the ways we fall short of the high ideals that we measure ourselves against. We have a constitution, including our bill of rights, that is the model and the envy of many other nations. We have one of the world's strongest economies and highest standards of living, even if they are a bit shaky right now. We have one of the most diverse populations imaginable, and we expand it every year by taking in more immigrants than most other nations combined.
We've produced poets and novelists, playwrights and composers, songwriters and musicians. We've plumbed some pretty dark depths, but we've taken those experiences and formed rich and wonderful creations from them. We've raised scientists and engineers who have lofted us into the heavens, split the atom, built the Internet, harnessed electricity, and conquered diseases. Our architects have designed and erected marvelous works--cathedrals and temples of stone and glass, legislatures of marble and bridges of steel, towers in which to live and work that are so tall they scrape the sky, monuments that are so beautiful or impressive or simply improbable that people come from around the round world to see them.
We have great and towering mountains, wide and fertile plains, deep and shadowy forests, rivers that roll for thousands and thousands of miles through an incredible diversity of lands. We have rocky coasts and sandy beaches. We have taiga and tundra, grassland and savannah, the Mojave and Sonoran Deserts and the Great Dismal Swamp. Our country is so wide, people on the other side of it will just be unfolding themselves from sleep waking up and starting the coffee long after I've finished writing this.
Our automotive industry is faltering on the edge of insolvency and our steel industry crashed and burned decades ago--but both are still more productive than any but those of China and Japan. We are second only to the UK in the number of new books published yearly. We produce more corn than any other country, and we are among the top growers of wheat and oats. We're still one of the leading producers of cloth and clothing. The computers of the world run on software created here. Our actors and directors and cinematographers entertain audiences from Malmo to Madagascar and from Togo to Tokyo.
My country has a lot of faults and flaws, many problems it has to solve. But it has much to be thankful for and to be proud of as well.
Happy birthday, United States of America. I love you.
So many of our deficiencies are the ways we fall short of the high ideals that we measure ourselves against. We have a constitution, including our bill of rights, that is the model and the envy of many other nations. We have one of the world's strongest economies and highest standards of living, even if they are a bit shaky right now. We have one of the most diverse populations imaginable, and we expand it every year by taking in more immigrants than most other nations combined.
We've produced poets and novelists, playwrights and composers, songwriters and musicians. We've plumbed some pretty dark depths, but we've taken those experiences and formed rich and wonderful creations from them. We've raised scientists and engineers who have lofted us into the heavens, split the atom, built the Internet, harnessed electricity, and conquered diseases. Our architects have designed and erected marvelous works--cathedrals and temples of stone and glass, legislatures of marble and bridges of steel, towers in which to live and work that are so tall they scrape the sky, monuments that are so beautiful or impressive or simply improbable that people come from around the round world to see them.
We have great and towering mountains, wide and fertile plains, deep and shadowy forests, rivers that roll for thousands and thousands of miles through an incredible diversity of lands. We have rocky coasts and sandy beaches. We have taiga and tundra, grassland and savannah, the Mojave and Sonoran Deserts and the Great Dismal Swamp. Our country is so wide, people on the other side of it will just be unfolding themselves from sleep waking up and starting the coffee long after I've finished writing this.
Our automotive industry is faltering on the edge of insolvency and our steel industry crashed and burned decades ago--but both are still more productive than any but those of China and Japan. We are second only to the UK in the number of new books published yearly. We produce more corn than any other country, and we are among the top growers of wheat and oats. We're still one of the leading producers of cloth and clothing. The computers of the world run on software created here. Our actors and directors and cinematographers entertain audiences from Malmo to Madagascar and from Togo to Tokyo.
My country has a lot of faults and flaws, many problems it has to solve. But it has much to be thankful for and to be proud of as well.
Happy birthday, United States of America. I love you.
