I love America. This is a truly wonderful country. My country has also been very lucky: natural resources stretching across a continent, isolation from Europe during its hideous 19th and 20th Century wars, and millions of immigrants who were the cream of their countryies--because they were risk-takers and entrepreneurs.

I do not, however, subscribe to the belief that we, America, are God's chosen people. God does not love one country or group of people any more than another group.

Period.

Hence, I cannot--I will not--subscribe to the belief that is deeply embedded in American culture and politics that America is God's chosen land and people. Bullshit.

Furthermore, this is an extremely dangerous concept. It leads to agression, conceit and hubris: all the things that lead to a country's downfall.

At the beginning of the 21st Century, the Republican Party--particularly the right-wing--has grabbed on to the idea of American Exceptionalism and is it to using to justify just about anything at home and abroad: religious intolerance, crony-oligarchical capitalism, environmental degradation, rampant consumersism, a sense of entitlement to the world's resources, gas-guzzling SUVs, McMansions, and first-strike wars. It is the neo-cons and the fundamentalist Protestants who use this belief to propogate their own versions of stupidity and bigotry.

We live in dangerous times. It does not shock or amaze me in the least that many nations are terrified of the Bush Administration. I specifically say the Bush Administration because I hope they are not terrified of me and the 50% of Americans who don't buy this line of crap.

Please read what leaders in the Church of England said recently (from The Times of London):

Last month, senior figures in the Church of England questioned America’s sense of "moral righteousness" in its foreign policy.

The bishops of Bath and Wells, Oxford, Coventry, and Worcester, said in their report on countering terrorism: "There is no uniquely righteous nation. No country should see itself as the redeemer nation, singled out by God as part of his providential plan."

There you have it. Amen. As a bumpersticker reads: "God Bless the Whole World. No Exceptions."