Quote:
Originally Posted by Biggles
...I think John Cleese said it best: "It's a bizarre mixture of the best and the worst."
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He's not wrong, and frankly, it's no disrespect. One of the great strengths of this country is that no two people march exactly to the same drumbeat, and it is, indeed, those who dance the strangest that get noticed first. Sometimes the strange ones are really just strange. Senator Joe McCarthy strangely saw Communists hiding everywhere, and ran right on over the Constitution in search of them. Other times, it's strange that leads to change. Rosa Parks acted strangely for a black woman in her time - and began a process that changed how blacks would be treated in America.
For every birther or conspiracy theorist in this land, there are dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of people who line up to give blood, give money, give time, and in many cases, give their lives - throughout its history. For every criminal we heard about in New Orleans following Katrina, there are dozens or more untold stories of people coming together to help each other. The same is true in the stories emerging this week from the tornado-blasted South.
Are we a perfect nation? By no means; far from it. But there are millions of us in this country who remain committed to keeping it a pretty nice place to be for everyone. Just because we may differ on what that means doesn't diminish that we do have that in common.