Rich, your attitude towards America and Americans is obviously taken from ignorance. You fail to understand us.
Asking the Negroes whether it was fun? They didn't participate in your diatribe (so far as I know). But yes, ask them. Ask Leonard Pitt. Ask Colin Powell. Ask Condoleeza Rice. For starters, at least. Ask a lot of highly paid people who happen also to be Negroes.
Don't ask folks of ANY color about ANYTHING until you know your audience better. Black, red, brown, white, yellow (purple, blue, and green if you can find them...) ALL have the same issues: In America, we have the land of opportunity and too many people who are DEAF AS A POST when it comes to hearing when opportunity knocks. If you ask blacks of the 21st century whether something was fun, take the time to see if they have the "you owe me something" or the "I owe this to myself" attitude. THEN (and ONLY then) can you speak of the down-trodden of any color.
America is the land where you have the right to try to make good things happen for yourself. FOR YOURSELF. Don't look to government to do it. Look within YOURSELF. If I read you correctly, your problem is that you don't understand America. It is the land where you have the freedom to try, but there is no guarantee that you will succeed OR FAIL in any enterprise. You have the shot at trying again, though. Just don't be STUPID when you try.
The essay towards which you directed your scorn was perhaps somewhat biased but its factual references (Federalist Papers, for example) were quite accurate. The USA might not be so great, true - but we have an awesome number of immigration applications and tons of illegal immigrants to go with the others. We must be really bad, so many people want to be here.
You know why certain other countries want to destroy us? Because we are the one thing they cannot tolerate - a country that ISN'T blindly bound to religion. (Despite GWB and the "moral majority".) The clerics who rule certain other countries that shall remain nameless here simply cannot abide by the thought that education will set their people free - and at the same time will collapse the secular power that the clerics have amassed. All you have to know comes from an Old Testament reference: Determine whose ox would be gored. Of COURSE they hate us. We are like poison to them. But not to their people - only to those in power who don't give a hoot about their people beyond the next fleecing they can manage.
But I digress. Rich, you can argue against the USA all you wish. You will probably argue against what I have said, too. And you know what? You have the right to do so. But don't try it in certain other countries that are so much "better" than us. So much better that you might disappear and never be heard from again. Even I wouldn't wish that on you, despite your negative attitude.
