• It should be in a constant state of revolution against the attempts of the powerful to exert their will over the less fortunate.
• It should export its revolution wherever possible to nations and peoples less free.
• It should always be training its young in the ideals, language, liberty and love of revolutionary living.

Instead it is a nation of entrenched wealth, with a smug but still scrambling middle class.

The principal exports are terror, poverty, and subjugation to its economic power and political issues.

It teaches that to survive under its hegemony, the rules of capitalism as played within its shores and the social pressures of reactionary fundamentalism must be obeyed blindly and instantly.

(Postscript: According to my avid viewing of "The Western Tradition" at 3 AM on PBS, the American revolution was not actually revolutionary, it was quite conservative - a group of wealthy businessmen, traders and gentleman farmers fighting to preserve the privileges they become comfortable with under the benign neglect of British colonial rule. That explains a lot...)

11/26/99