Was I a good American? How good an American was I? Did I do what I could to resist the takeover of my country and the brutalisation of my fellow human beings? How much further could I have gone? Were the crimes of the Bush administration those that demand you give up your life and everyday commitments to throw yourself into maximum resistance? If not, then what were we waiting for? The questions have troubled me regularly these last five years, because I was one of the millions of American citizens who did not shut down Guantánamo Bay and stop SPP and Real ID and other atrocities of the administration.
Sadly, we live in a time when being informed is enough to brand you "anti-American." Don't believe the U.S. should engage in preemptive strikes? Wonder if America has the right to topple countries' leaders, install our own governments and occupy these countries for decades? Don't appreciate increases to the defense budget's already mammoth $400 billion price tag or that America is now more Empire than Republic? In other words, is "taxation without representation" getting you down?
Take heart. Though some may call you anti-American, you're not the first to feel this way.
As Thomas Jefferson reminded in the Declaration of Independence, "Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it..."
Face it, these days, Thomas Jefferson (and several other Founding Fathers) would be considered anti-American, too.
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