I love the idea of America. Yet, the reality is that it has a hell of a lot of unacknowledged blood on its hands. This is not to say that terrorism isn't horrible or that Stalinism wasn't a much greater monster - but the US has some big dark skeletons hiding deep in its closet.

Real American history is brutal and full of some genuinely terrible acts, but American political leaders (and cable news personalities) talk about it like it's a glossy, Photoshopped magazine ad with no real warts left. Even todays news and public dialogue of the Iraq and Afghanistan occupations and the rendition and torture of "enemy combatants" are a dressed up, sanitized versions of reality that are meant to not shock our conscience.

It seems to me that the problem isn't so much one of patriotism; American citizens just aren't allowed (by threat of public censure) to admit any shame at all for their country's actions, or to even know (through government secrecy or re-written history) that those shameful things happened - and low and behold, they just keep on happening! Sure, "un-American" dissenters aren't jailed like they might be in China or Cuba, but that's still not exactly an open society, and it's hardly patriotic to denounce people for speaking their minds.

A patriot's first duty is to the truth, because - more than anything else - truth enables the freedom that we love.

Peace.