Laying blanket of guilt on U.S. ignores history as force for good

"The United States of America is the greatest force for good in the history of the world."

The preceding is a pretty straightforward statement and sports quotation marks because I said it, and now I've written it as well.

I am generally able to "consider the source" of most all the goofy things liberals write and say, but I must admit, I get extremely tired of hearing and reading about this terrible, despicable place known as America. In just the last two days, a couple of locals, representing the Howard Zinn/George McGovern/Al Gore/Barack Obama (where does one stop?) wing of the "I Hate My Country" party expounded about slavery, conquest, the Mexican and Indian wars, abuse of labor unions (whatever that means), wars to control oil, etc.

This has been a fashionable pastime since the 1960s when I was growing up, which may explain why I am so weary of it.

These learned souls never mention that it was the USA who kept much of Europe from literally starving to death during and after WWI (for those of you might care, the effort was led by a then-obscure mining engineer named Herbert Hoover.) They never mention that it was Americans who sailed to Europe and pulled France and England's chestnuts out of the fire and saved their countries from true conquest. They neglect the fact that prior to our entry into WWII, it was American goods and money that literally kept Britain, and therefore western civilization, from falling into the abyss of Nazism. Following the war, it was, once again, the USA, that saved Europe from starvation via the Marshall Plan. Our wheat kept millions of Soviets from starving many times even though we were engaged in the Cold War with their leadership.

I personally remember countless disasters, famines and conflicts where Americans were on the scene, feeding, fixing, fighting and usually financing...and the only territory we asked was enough room to bury our dead.

My country is imperfect. Because governments are made up of human beings, they are not only imperfect, but are also capable of evil, because human beings, my friends, are flawed and are not perfectible...at least on this earth.

To those of you who are ashamed of my country, I would ask: Would you have preferred to live under Josef Stalin? Hitler? Pol Pot? Chairman Mao?

And to those hand-wringers among us who agonize about "enhanced interrogation" of those who would behead us and despair because our carbon footprint is too large, are you equally concerned about the 1.37 million innocent human babies that are willfully killed in America each year? Seems I never hear your crowd mention that little statistic.

If you really want to continue down the tired path of perpetuating guilt among Americans for admittedly horrible things such as slavery, oppression and war casualties, please; do some mental and intellectual housecleaning on the issue of abortion, or kindly shut up.