People say, “You should be grateful that you live in a country where your rights are guaranteed.” Yes, that is something to be grateful for—that my God given rights are protected—but should I be inspired with patriotic fervor because I’m not shot for speaking the truth, or because I’m not jailed for going to Mass? I am grateful to be able to practice my religion but ungrateful when the state promotes irreligion or allows devil worshippers the same rights as God fearing people. Should I be patriotic because I can believe in the Ten Commandments while the state ignores the first three, overturns the 5th by law and allows corruption of its citizens—even the very young—by those who militantly oppose the 6th and 9th? Shouldn’t the state be protecting the family and family values rather than promoting contraception, divorce and same sex marriage? What would we thing of a hospital that did not believe in the germ theory? And yet perversion which is the known cause of AIDS goes unimpeded.

I think everyone is generally grateful for the economic benefits attached to our nation, but the moral state—the soul of our country—is not doing too well. And let’s not forget the intellectual aspect: the schools where true religion is taboo and atheism is taught, where creation in which man comes from the hand of God body and soul, must yield to the evolution of man from an ape. Our Lady of Fatima said that in punishment for sin the errors of Russia will spread. The root error is atheism and it sure is spreading.

I think they were a little disappointed when I said that, if that’s really how it worked, I’d just as soon take the money from the cage guy directly. You know, just to save time. And also because I did enjoy the squirrelly feeling of emerging from the dark, smoke-filled back room of the bank with a paper bag full of money. (They’d had heavy inflation there, so withdrawing a month’s salary involved some serious volume.)

Now, having been back longer, I have more rigorous ideological standards that I want satisfied before I’m prepared to go wild with patriotic fervor. But yeah, it’s worth remembering that in lots of ways, we ain’t got it too bad.

There are plenty of ways in which the United States is, at any rate, a lot better than most other places in the world right now.

But the truth is, your question reveals a political science-oriented mind, while I am a Catholic philosopher. I don’t tend to evaluate the state of a country so much by comparison to other current countries, as by my own conception of what a state should be, and also to some degree reflection on what various societies have been like over the course of history. In many respects, I don’t think most any Western countries are in particularly great shape. Whereas non-Western countries… have other problems.

And yet… this is still a country founded on modernist principles. A country that, one way or another, still appropriates more than half of net earned incomes in taxes, that does practically nothing to defend the unborn, that has allowed its social services to be so rotted through with cancerous liberal ideals that it’s hard to imagine how we could ever turn them around. There are too many things wrong to let me enjoy a day of untroubled patriotic euphoria, even on the fourth of July.

Still, as compared with many European countries… God bless the USA!

Yes, in general, I tend to be proudest of those aspects of American culture that are most obviously in contrast to Western Europe. And those of which the liberals are most ashamed. It makes me wish I could engage in displays of unbridled patriotism — you know, since I have so much common ground with unapologetic American patriots… and yet, and yet, and yet.

On the other hand, it’s natural and inevitable that a country will be left with a sort of overall feeling or attitude towards a major world event like that. In the case of Vietnam, for example, we feel sour and ashamed. I won’t venture any thoughts on how we should feel about that, but I do think it proper, when we reflect on WWII, that our on-the-whole feeling be positive. Even if our record was not flawless (which as I say, would have been almost miraculous in a conflagration of that magnitude), the American people achieved a level of national unity in that war the like of which we’ve never matched before or since, and made significant sacrifices for a cause that was both important and just. And we ended up doing considerable good for the world. As a citizen of a later generation looking back, I think that’s legitimate reason to feel proud. Not to engage in mindless, jingoistic, red-tinted idealization of every aspect of that war, but to feel proud, the way it’s possible to feel proud of a family member for some noteworthy accomplishment without denying that they still have some serious character flaws.

As for the capital punishment issue, I never supposed you were joking. I supposed you were baiting me. And I didn’t wish to rise to the bait. Perhaps you weren’t thinking of it quite that way, but regardless… I understand your argument, and of course agree that choices should incur consequences, but, as you are aware, I am disturbed by what seem to me to be just a few sporadic and showy driblets of dramatic high justice from a government that has in a thousand other ways undermined its own authority even to address such matters. I don’t oppose capital punishment because it’s too mean or too violent or because I doubt that men like Scott Peterson deserve to die. But I’m not going to get warm fuzzies over the occasional execution thrown as a sop to the people in a few dramatic, high-profile cases, while our massive entitlement programs, our crazed litigation-happy culture, and even our criminal justice system in all but exceptional cases (just to name a few) all show how uninterested our government is in that kind of justice and personal responsibility. It disgusts me to see a government like ours trying to don that noble mantle the way a boy king might decide to go about knighting people as a lark on second Wednesdays of every other month. Better just to act like what it is — a civil peace-keeper — and content itself with locking dangerous people up.

The funny thing is, to some people, these are all contemptible aspects of our nation, and areas in which Europe excels.

Defeating the Nazis and the Japanese militarists were certainly great accomplishments of world historical importance (I’m thinking the word “duh!” for having written that sentence). Unfortunately, much of the credit for the former goes to the Soviets on the Eastern Front, where most of the fighting occurred. That said, the effect of American involvement was good in that we supplied the Soviets; as a result, they took most of the casualties while we took the western half of Europe back for its rightful owners. As for the Japanese, we seem to have behaved fairly well until the last days of the war, when we decided that wiping out cities was the way to go. Net gain for humanity? — absolutely (provided we don’t count “our role” in throwing Chiang Kai-shek under the bus and letting the Communists take over the largest country on earth and kill more Chinese than the Japanese dreamed of). Shameful moral outrages on our part? — also yes.

It was a tragic victory — a victory over great evils, though tragic; a tragedy, though we achieved much good.

Just to add a couple for now: every time I feel bad about our country, I always get some solace from comparing us with Europe. Compared to most European countries, we are more religious, more family-oriented, more prudish, and all around less contemptibly spineless. We’re still actively fighting some evils that most Europeans mutely accepted a long time ago. That does my heart some good.

Our revolution against the British may not have been justified, but I still think our role in WWII is something of which we can rightly feel proud.