Sometimes I want to say to the Muslim world, "Yes, I understand how insulting it is that Americans don't know anything about you, as if you don't matter in the least-but don't take it personally. We don't know anything about anyone." Even in our own country-let alone theirs-it's the local news we're interested in. There's a half-hour for the network news with that boring, yucky stuff about overseas, and two to three hours of what's going on in the tri-county area, and how to carve a pumpkin.

Does anyone really believe that we can afford, in twenty years' time, to he as dumb as we are now about the part of the world from which this supposedly unfathomable hate is coming? Will airport security in 2025 still not be able to tell an Arab from a Mexican? Of course not, because, like they say, war teaches us geography. Also history, religion, economics-all the courses recent college graduates have been allowed to skip so they could study Madonna and Muhammad Ali and vampires and lesbian novels after World War II and p.o.r.n and how to brew beer. (Those are all real college courses, I couldn't have improved on them comedically if I tried.) But the learning process will go slowly here because there is no drumbeat for it, in government or the media, because both depend on kissing their voters'/audiences' a.s.ses. Americans can only be told they're stupid by surly British people on prime-time torture game shows. Consequently, we revel in our ignorance. We're proud of it. It's a right we've earned by building this country from the ground up. And, once again, by "building this country from the ground up" I mean being born here. The first President Bush pretended he was dumber than he was by eating pork rinds, all the better to lose the horrible stigma of being a thoughtful Ivy League Eastern establishment type. His son didn't have to pretend quite so much, and was instantly adored for being one of us.

Yeah, the presidency, it's only the most important job in the world, why reach for the stars on that one? Let's get a regular Joe. Before 9/11, it was funny that George Bush didn't know where foreign countries were and who ran them, but it's not so funny now. His pre-9/11 policy on the Middle East-basically, Go ahead, kill each other, I'll be on the ranch-seems a little out of step with the times now. Bill Clinton may have been an evil man who likes the ladies, but he sure got it that ignorant disengagement was not an option in the 21st century.

It's easy to just go along to get along, whistling in the dark, lazily placing blind faith in our leadership. The war is a scary thing, and for some folks, George Bush became a genius on September 12, and there's no need to take a re-look-see at that! People say, "I'm not interested in politics," like it's just another hobby, like "I'm not into skiing or needlepoint."

But freedom isn't free. It shouldn't be a bragging point that, "Oh, I don't get involved in politics," as if that makes you somehow cleaner. No, that makes you derelict of duty in a republic. Liars and panderers in government would have a much harder time of it if so many people didn't insist on their right to remain ignorant and blindly agreeable.

And foreign adversaries would have to calculate the savvy of our people into their nefarious plans.

Question: Where do terrorists get the money to live in their fancy caves? That's right, from rich, oil-producing countries. And where do the oil-producing countries get the money? From us buying oil. Yes, it really does take eleven gallons of oil to light one 75-watt bulb for a year. We don't think of oil as being involved when we light a lamp or leave the television on all day, but it is.

I don't know if every time a bell rings an angel gets his wings, but it's a fact that every time a Christmas display goes up, more money pours into Saudi Arabia- you know, our "ally" (wink, wink). And the Saudis and the United States have something in common. Well, two things if you count the sick co-dependency with oil and cash. The other thing we have in common is Osama bin Laden's hatred for both of us-them for letting us in the Holy Land, and us for being in the Holy Land. It's something about the Holy Land.

Give this to bin Laden: he keeps it real about what's actually bugging him and his kind: filthy, dirty infidels-Jews and Americans-in the Holy Land, there, of course, to protect the oil. This is a crowd that will tell you right to your face that they hate your friggin' guts and think you're irredeemable, so you really must go. Which is what we, and by "we" I mean I, really think about them and their financial patrons, i.e., the Saudis, who bribe bin Laden to hate us slightly more than them.

And that bribe money comes from us, because to us, the Holy Land isn't the holy land-it's the oily land, and after seeing Saddam Hussein almost take it over in 1991, we're not about to let it go unguarded again. Now, we wouldn't need to guard it at all if we weren't constantly fiending for oil, but we're talkin' to a junkie here. And a junkie's first answer to a problem isn't "give up the dope"-it's "how can I make this work and keep doing dope." That's what we want to do-win a war against people backed by oil money, but do it without bringing oil into the equation. Because, as I've said, we love our cars more than we love each other and we'd hump them if we could.

Which brings me to Christmas lights. I can't tell you how many people I talked to last December who thought they were actually helping the war effort by having monstrous front lawn displays. Why did they think it was a help? Well, they were a little fuzzier on that. Something about "or else they win" and a big slice of "it makes me feel better," which, after all, is the goal of any war machine. To make us feel better. Us. Not the kid from the ghetto or poor rural town who's in the army guarding the oil.

I hate to say it, but we used to win to feel better, and now we feel better to win.

Which isn't to say around the holidays things can't be festive, they can-I'm not a Communist. But folks, there's a war on. Not to mention that Christmas is supposed to he a reverent, spiritual and, yes, joyous celebration of the everlasting life and love of the Son of G.o.d-it's not a compet.i.tion. If Christmas is really about Jesus, why does your front lawn have to be Jesus in Las Vegas? Should a creche really be electric? Does everything on the lawn have to light up and move? Santas and sleighs and reindeer and snowmen and elves and 12-foot candy canes and toy soldiers and Little Drummer Boys and trains, all with movable parts and sound-effects of birds chirping and bells ringing and Santa, in stereo, with his back-up singers the Ho, Ho, Hos. Christ, if bin Laden doesn't like what's going on in the real Holy Land, he should check out the one at the corner of Sunset and Alpine.

It's not only gaudy and tacky, it just encourages people to go out driving around looking at Christmas lights, wasting even more oil!

My father, who grew up in the Depression and seemed to think the American economy hadn't changed much into the sixties, used to fine my sister and me a nickel every time we left a room with the light on. It doesn't seem like much, but then again our allowance was fifty cents a week. If only the people who ran stores had kept prices at their 1935 level, he would have been a happy guy. And I could have afforded a few more baseball cards. But to this day, I do not leave lights on when I leave a room, not even in a hotel.

Remember, we here in the States aren't going to make a difference by getting a flashlight and a plane ticket and going over there and searching for the bad people cave by cave. It's all the little things we can do here that add up-it's the lamp you don't turn off that down the road gets a guy killed. I guess what I'm saying is, use the battery-powered "personal ma.s.saging devices" instead of the ones that plug into the wall. And this holiday season, make sure the only thing lit on your lawn is a disoriented Robert Downey, Jr.

Merry Christmas!

Eye On the Ball

Before 9/11 our government got involved in protecting us from all sorts of hazards, from the Budweiser frog to asbestos, from road rage to Internet p.o.r.n and Bill Clinton's p.e.n.i.s. And by watching the nightly news, you'd think the greatest threat to our personal safety was either shark attacks or mold. But then came our 9/11 "wake-up call," and everything...

Please. If everything changed, how come we're still fighting the old, stupid wars alongside the real war? Why are decent citizens still being jailed for smoking the wrong plant, easing the suffering of the terminally ill, or accepting cash for s.e.x instead of the customary dinner and drinks?

Politicians love to talk about the wisdom of the people in their a.s.s-kissing stump speeches, but apparently these wise people are not even smart enough to decide when they can die. Which is ironic, because the two things that bring the most wisdom in life are pain and age-and most people who want to end it usually have plenty of both. How annoying it must be for such people, old and in pain, to have young, arrogant "lawmakers" making life and death decisions for them.

The adult, right-minded patients requesting physician-a.s.sisted suicides are not victims of their doctors, they're victims of their illnesses. The doctors are humanely facilitating the inevitable, helping those dying in agony to make their exit with dignity, either by providing prescription medication, or the old-fashioned way, by showing them the bill. We wouldn't think of allowing our pets or racehorses to needlessly suffer before an inescapable death. Why not be just as "humane" to people? Isn't the choice to accept death with dignity a precious personal freedom and a far cry better than sitting in a Craftmatic adjustable bed with a tube in your nose trying to eat a puzzle?

Which brings me to the Nimitzes. In early 2002, Chester W. Nimitz, Jr., son of the famed World War II admiral and a highly decorated admiral in his own right, killed himself in a double suicide with his wife, Joan, in what I like to call the Irrefutable Argument for a.s.sisted Suicide.

The Nimitzes had everything: a good life, honors and real honor, a loving marriage, good kids-everything that defines a happy life for most people. And then they didn't, because they got old. Robust into their 80s, at some point the body goes-it just does. It's not designed for forever. Life became a ch.o.r.e of just staying alive, and that's no life at all. Maybe if the Nimitzes had led dull, inactive lives, like the weenies who write stupid laws, then the transition to droolitude wouldn't have been so hard to take. But they lived, so just hanging on wasn't an option. They had lost their mobility, then their health, and finally, most sadly, the remote.

They told the kids their plans, said the key good-byes, put all their affairs in absolutely apple-pie order, and then shuffled off their mortal coil together, quietly and with dignity. Having led a good life, they weren't afraid to die. Spiritual people never are. It's the religious who are more often afraid to bring on the after-party. Then they project that fear on others, like the Nimitzes, who would have been stopped if they had gotten so infirm they couldn't do it themselves.

Mr. President, and everyone else there in Washington, get your noses out of our personal affairs. Stop trying to police the private, adult decisions we make in our bedrooms, our doctors' offices or section 29, row L of a Nelly concert. Read the Enquirer, do something else to scratch that itch. Get a life. You have a big, big job now, and frankly, you're not so good you can do it distracted.

Something and Nothing

Because the subject of history in high school and college has become a kind of fun create-your-own potpourri of whatever silly peripheral knowledge you want to pretend you're studying, we're now several generations removed from the important idea that we should at least try to learn from our past. It was less than a century ago that government was expected to do far less for its citizens than it does today. No federal income tax was a.s.sessed before 1913, because government didn't require the kind of dough it needs now that it's running a concierge business. What it was expected to do was protect the people, with an army for foreigners, and police for crooks. No endowing of artists, no welfare for fat cats, no making sure the drawstring on your kid's pajamas doesn't strangle him.

One politician got it exactly right the week of September 11. Curt Weldon, Republican congressman from Pennsylvania, said: "It's a tragedy that it took the loss of thousands of lives to wake this country up and realize that our number one responsibility is not education-and I'm a teacher-and it's not health care, and I'm married to a nurse. It is in fact the security and safety of the American people."

Remember that when you're in the voting booth. Stop voting for the officials who offer us the biggest tax cut and the longest paternity leave, and start electing the ones committed to security first at any cost. Remember that the primary function of government is protection: to handle the kind of threats only they can handle. I can't build a nuclear missile or an Apache helicopter, so I don't mind when my tax dollars go to buy them, because I know they're necessary to deter or repel the savages who exist outside, and sometimes inside, our moat. Of course it would be nice to excise the corrupt waste and pilfering that goes on in military culture, but until we do, there's no choice but to live with it, so that we have a Pentagon and an army that scares the c.r.a.p out of people.

Only one year after an attack as vicious and foreboding as September 11, for so many voters to be so badly prioritizing is very frightening. It's as if on September 11 our heads all came up, like grazing deer who heard a snapping twig. Senses heightened, adrenaline pumping, we stood silently for a moment on full alert, knowing that there was danger near.

And then we went back to grazing. Grazing in our private and convenient little world of consumption and ent.i.tlement, encouraged to do SO by a government that actually told its citizens in wartime to shop, go out to eat, and, for G.o.d's sake, travel! "Go ahead, get away," they insisted, "We'll handle the war; you've been through enough."

After the attacks, our president said this about the terrorists: "They underestimated us.'

No, sir, you did.

Our government's first mistake was treating us like victims instead of soldiers in the war on terror. Typical of a system where the political tail wags the dog of state, the answer to war is: if the happy ending is hearing the "all-clear" signal, then why not just start with that?

Somewhere along the line, the people became the leaders and the leaders became the led. "Poll driven" is a great phrase because it brings to mind a great plain, across which is being driven a dumb herd- you know, Congress and the President, who decide policy not by what's best for America and its future, but by crunching the numbers and establishing the path of least resistance to re-election. One might think that an approval rating above eighty-which President Bush enjoyed for a full six months after the attacks-would he cushion enough to spend a little political capital on "givin' it to us straight;" after all, for a short time we were actually ready to accept it.

But politicians don't do that anymore. Ronald Reagan could have brought America to a sensible place about guns after he got shot-not even the NRA could have fought a popular new president with a bullet in his chest if he said, "Hey, we all love guns, but let's admit the framers had in mind militias with muskets, not urban gangs with machine pistols. And besides, I just got shot." But the moment pa.s.sed. And now the moments after 9/11 seem like a long, long time ago.

Because our leaders now follow us, it is therefore up to us to set our national priorities. As long as we signal that the economy, education, or banning cell phones in cars is more important to us than national security, then that's exactly where our pandering, finger-in-the-wind government will focus our resources.

People keep saying, "we need to remember September 11." Yeah, but what we really need to remember is how we felt right after September 11, those heady few weeks when we couldn't believe how petty we'd been in the past, or how perfectly Seinfeld had captured the zeitgeist of the 90s-because it turned out everything back then really was about nothing! Impeachment was nothing! Elian Gonzalez was nothing! Gays in the military, smoking in movies, childproofing Las Vegas-it was all nothing! We all came to our senses for five minutes and realized how nothing it all was and how much a new set of priorities was in order.

And then we forgot again.

To Die For

Five months after the attacks, the Fox network broadcast the first installment of The Glutton Bowl. It was exactly what it sounded like: an eating contest from the world's biggest pigs. Who wants to marry a Frigidaire? And it was widely laughed off or admired because OR ELSE THEY WIN!

We just don't get it. We cannot, for the life of us, figure out why a world where half the people go to bed hungry every night would find such a thing rude-the equivalent of standing in front of a homeless guy with a sandwich and tossing it onto a pa.s.sing garbage truck, instead of leaving it for him in the dumpster.

We not only waste an extraordinary amount of food, we also play with it and prevent it from being grown. We wrestle in Jell-O while poorer nations' exotic dancers are forced to square off in mud. Our mindset is "If you've got it, flaunt it"-not "if you've got it, share it." And we pretend being religious makes us moral and charitable.

But the charitable don't gorge for fun while others forage for sc.r.a.ps. Whatever happened to "there are people starving in China"?

Hamburger ads say "If it doesn't get all over the place, it doesn't belong in your face"- and that's a selling point. We shop with fork-lifts. We eat giant food off of giant plates. We have a national holiday where we stuff food into other food. We demand food immediately, and in the car, so we can eat, shop, and pollute the atmosphere all at the same time. We eat on planes, trains and automobiles and everywhere in between. We even take our wife out to a nice Italian meal before shooting her in the head-allegedly.

Even our poor people are fat.

Food is so abundant here people staple their stomach shut so they won't kill themselves from gorging on it-and then, of course, this being America, are afforded the kind of reception normally reserved for somebody who'd been shot down behind enemy lines, for their "courage" and "discipline." Roseanne tried the procedure without success, but that's because cows have five stomachs.

lute more groundwater than industry. By the way, whatever happened to the old-fashioned way of losing weight: liposuction and months of nonstop freebasing?

America represents less than 5% of the world's population, yet we consume 30% of its resources. We are bogarting the earth. We could feed the world with just the garnish off our plates, and yet we pay farmers not to grow crops. We actually produce more than enough grain to feed every person on earth, but the part of it we don't let rot to keep prices up we feed to our livestock so we can enjoy meaty, inefficient diets that sap our resources, deteriorate our organs and pollute more ground water than industry.

And make no mistake, it is about the poverty. Many times I've heard the argument, "the 9/11 hijackers were not poor," and many of them weren't. But that doesn't mean poverty isn't a root cause of terrorism. Hungry people tend to follow the ideology of those willing to feed them and resent those who don't. Desperate, poor young Muslim men in many countries are sponsored by wealthy Saudi Arabia, which is guided by the fanatical Wahhabi sect, to attend madra.s.ses, which are hotbeds of Muslim fanaticism and anti-American indoctrination. They go for the room and board, they stay for the hate.

Of course, we'll probably heat them to killing us, because that's what gluttony does to people. It kills them. There's a reason why the top-selling prescription drugs in America are all different chemical elixirs for ulcers, bloating, indigestion, high cholesterol-because no one ever says to Americans, "Maybe you should change your diet." There's money in eating badly, and there's money in the pills that put out the fires set by eating badly.

Cardiovascular disease is our number-one killer; cancer is number two; diabetes is up 40% in the past decade, and American adults have a 61% obesity rate. Even kids here are fat little eating machines-half of them look like Pugsly. And why not, schools teach acceptance above all: "Love Your Body Day." How about a "Delaying Gratification for Future Well-being Day"?

It is a terrible irony, not lost I'm sure on many of our most fervid haters, that we are dying of over-consumption, and they of under-consumption. As a great comedian once said, if only Mama Ca.s.s had shared her sandwich with Karen Carpenter, there'd be two more singers alive today.

Nothing But Time

There s an old Russian proverb that says, "Not everyone who snores is sleeping"-and boy do h.o.r.n.y, married guys know that. It also applies to our current enemy. Even though there was a lull in the attack on America after September 11, there's still a war going on. We need to remember that. We're not safe, and it's not over. And it's not going to be over in our lifetime, unless we're at the end of a thousand-year struggle.

The people of the Muslim world, like most people outside the United States, have much longer memories than we do. We're a young country with a short history, and even that has proved too much of a challenge to keep alive now that we stopped teaching our children actual knowledge and facts. Not so in the coffeehouses of Damascus or Cairo. To folks in this part of the world, the thirteenth century was last Friday. Milosevic in Yugoslavia stirred the pot against the Kosovars back in 1989 because it was the anniversary of a battle the Serbs lost to the encroaching-weren't they always?-Muslims.

The 600th anniversary. And it resonated.

During the Gulf War, Saddam Hussein had some of his billboards-he's the Angelyne of Baghdad-changed to make him look like Salahadin, the Muslim hero who retook Jerusalem in 1187. But ask anyone in America under 100 to write an essay on why George Washington really earned his nickname. (The Father of our Country, for those under fifty.) Not only do dictators have more time to work with than we do, they also have more bodies. Saddam famously said he would win the contest with America in 1991 because we couldn't stomach the thought of 50,000 dead in one battle, and he was right. He, however, being the virile, manly strongman he is, can stomach the thought of thousands of dead. It's almost a prerequisite for dictators. Stalin was such a strong leader, he was able to stomach twenty million of his own people dying in World War II. As Melanie Griffith once said when they had to explain the Holocaust to her for a movie role: "That's a lot of people!"

Since the Second Intifada, the Israelis have lost the population equivalent of our 9/11 body count every ten weeks.

Which is all just to say that the world is a bad place with bad men, and some of the worst of them are not through with us. The terrorists weren't just a radical fringe group who have since been rounded up and disposed of, and we certainly haven't caved to their demands, pulling all our troops from the Holy Land and telling Israel to go p.i.s.s up a rope. It's not like 9/11 was one of those socially embarra.s.sing, impulsive outbursts and now they've got it all out of their system and they're in anger-management cla.s.s. They're sure of their cause and their objectives, and they're about as self-righteous as you can get without actually sitting on the board of the 700 Club. And every day Charlie spends in the jungle, he gets stronger.

We're engaged with an enemy that strikes intermittently, every few years-kind of like baseball players. They rely on the element of surprise and depend upon our complacency. It's not enough for us to count on strictly defensive measures-tightening our borders and increasing airport security. The defensive approach in military tactics always loses. All lines are ultimately Maginot lines. The best defense is offense, scaring people into not trying anything. Covering up, as under a magical s.p.a.ce shield, and saying, "You can't get at me" never wins. They always can.

"If history teaches us anything," Michael Corleone said, "it's that you can kill anyone."

And the folks that have been killing Americans lately don't see our annihilation as a rush job. If you've seen the footage of Osama bin Laden, he always has a serene, confident look on his face, like he just communed with Allah or got blown. It's a look that seems to say, "Death to America, but all in good time."

Americans have trouble relating to the idea of "in good time." As Carrie Fisher once wrote, instant gratification would he fine except it takes too long. The idea of having to wait centuries to achieve a goal is just preposterous to us.

But this war that we call The War on Terrorism, this new war against a new foe, really isn't new. It certainly isn't new to the people we're fighting. The war they're fighting has been going on since Pope Urban II declared the first Crusade in 1095. The struggle going on now for Jerusalem is seen as a battle first waged against western Crusaders. Ariel Sharon is just the latest G.o.dfrey of Bologne or Richard the Lionhearted, sent off by infidels like Pope Urban or George Bush to secure their client-state outpost in the Middle East. What the infidels call themselves- crusaders, Israelis, Americans-is unimportant. The intervals of time are unimportant. What's important is winning.

We get through a year of no attacks and sound the all-clear. They reload and wait. As the months roll on beyond 9/11, let's all try to remember: it's not over when we say it's over. It's over when they say it's over.

Watching What We Say

In early 2002 pressure was building in the Democratic Party for someone to say something about.. well, anything really. Since the attacks in September, the government in power had done a good job of casting any dissenting opinion as ill-timed and unpatriotic. Have a question or a comment? Get in the line over there marked "Al Qaeda Operatives."

But finally Senate majority leader Torn Daschle, firebrand that he is, rose in the Senate well and said: "Before we make commitments in resources, I think we need to have a clearer understanding of what the direction will he."

Wow. You go, girl. What a gauntlet to throw down-the leader of the party that got the most votes in the last election asking, "So what's next?"

But the other party was outraged. Tom DeLay called Daschle's remarks "disgusting." Really? The leader of the Congress, the body of government a.s.signed by the const.i.tution to appropriate funds, asking what they'll be used for-that's "disgusting?"

I've never understood people who interpret the Bible literally, and the const.i.tution loosely.

Trent Lott was also indignant, so much so that his hair almost moved. He said, "How dare Senator Daschle criticize President Bush while we are fighting our war on terrorism, especially when we have troops in the field?" Tom Davis, R-VA., said Daschle's comments "have the effect of giving aid and comfort to our enemies." I a.s.sumed he meant the Democrats.

Hey, you're either with us or against us.

But come on, America can't have it that only one party is allowed to play politics and speak out-it'll completely unbalance our corrupt system of crony capitalism. Plus, "with us or against us," when misapplied to our own loyal opposition, is more like what we're fighting, and less like what we're fighting for. One of the great strengths of this country is our ability to examine matters of national policy in the court of public opinion. But we panic and forget that, time after time. I myself had the honor of being scolded by the president's spokesman with the words "Americans need to watch what they say.... "

Yeah, if you're giving away state secrets. But otherwise, not having to watch what you say is why we love it here, or it should be. Having to "watch it" is what stinks about living under the Taliban or the KGB or the Stasis. Our problem with free speech in America is, we've taken away so much of it voluntarily through the enforced appropriateness of political correctness, that when a high official says "watch what you say," we think: "So what?! h.e.l.l, watching what you say is what life in America is like anyway, at least if you work in an office and want to stay married."

By the way, for someone who almost always has a dissenting opinion, my comment about the 9/11 kamikaze pilots not being cowards was, ironically, not dissent at all. The dissenting opinion in the aftermath of 9/11 was "We shouldn't go to war in Afghanistan." Now, I've always been for giving war a chance and more good, hard U.S. military a.s.s-kickings to any Gangsta government on any continent, be it Hussein, Milosevic, Noriega, Adid, or the Taliban. Or Quaddafi, just for old time's sake.

No, what I said was not dissent but an uncomfortable truth, which is different. That's more about timing, and it's another reason we desperately need to fight for free speech in wartime. Because people who get in trouble for what they say aren't necessarily wrong. Athenians made Socrates drink the hemlock, but not because his warnings about their downfall had been mistaken; he was right, and they hated him for it. Kind of like Al Gore in a toga. The Smothers Brothers got thrown off TV in 1969 for saying the Vietnam War was immoral and un-winnable. By 1979 that was such an accepted mainstream opinion you'd have a hard time finding someone to argue the reverse-although I have, and do.

The problem in America is not too much speaking out-it's too little. We're not overrun with rebels here, we're overrun with sheep. We need more people, not less, to say out loud what at least some others are thinking. We need raw honesty especially in an age where we cannot expect statesmanship. Government can be trusted less than ever to tell the truth, because they are owned more than ever by moneyed interests whose interest is money and not truth. The United States government should be telling you the things I've been saying-not me! They They should be making the case to conserve fuel, pay the full tax load, boycott diamonds-but they don't, because they can't. should be making the case to conserve fuel, pay the full tax load, boycott diamonds-but they don't, because they can't.

They talk of integrity, but their idea of it is not to betray their donors.

Not Just Different

In the fall of 2001 the lowlife traitorous ingrate in America was the guy arguing, "America is the greatest nation on earth," when everyone knew it was the greatest nation ever on earth. The all-time champion civilization, because coming out on top of a p.i.s.sing match with the 8th century Mayans-that's what's important.

As I'm sure you know by now, I'm not much for tradition or sentiment-but America doesn't need sentiment to make its case as the greatest nation on earth, right now anyway, and that's good enough for me. I'll deal with the Ming Dynasty later, and perhaps stop there for lunch.

I've tried to stress a few concepts in this book: making connections; keeping in mind that government's first job is protection; and perspective. Americans love to say "this is the greatest country on earth!" but they're just pulling that out of their a.s.s; there is no perspective. They have not traveled extensively overseas, nor have they done exhaustive, life-index factor by life-index factor studies of the United States vs. Belgium or Sweden or Luxembourg. The health care system may very well he better in Germany, and the weather in Spain beats Buffalo, and I know I like the pot laws better in Holland. The truth is, people are inert by nature, and most think their place of origin is superior because they're used to it.

But there is no denying America is Rome at this moment in history, and that in itself is greatness. Even greater is having the power of Rome and also a record, comparable to other pre-eminent powers, of remarkably mute brutality. No country with comparable power ever trod so gently on the rest of the world, something foreigners often pretend they don't know, but they do. They do because other countries still teach their d.a.m.n kids history!-which will tell you that in any era, it's some country's turn to be "the man" on this planet: the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Mongols, the Arabs, the Spanish, the French, the English-even the Iraqis (Babylonia)-everybody gets a turn to carry the big stick, and when they do, they've all behaved even worse than we have.

A nation with the power of the United States can't be expected to never get its uniform a little dirty-but attention must he paid to perspective. Rome didn't have a big terrorism problem because when someone would p.i.s.s them off, they'd kill all the men and sow salt in the earth so nothing would ever qrow there again. That's a conservative. America does not go to war to rob or exterminate or get even; we don't conquer, we don't plunder, and we don't carry off anyone's women and children into slavery and concubining. Name another nation that could conquer the world, but chose not to. A lot of nations have tried, and usually for one reason: they could. They found themselves-like America is now-pre-eminent. And that big stick in their hand was just too much fun not to use.

America does, as I have not flinched from pointing out in this hook, practice a kind of pa.s.sive-aggressive violence on the world's poor, driven by our gluttony and myopia-that's bad, and people die from it. But "American foreign policy" and "the Palestinian situation" are the "dog ate my homework" and "my parents screwed me up" of political excuses. I am so tired of hearing about the brutality of America's foreign policy from a culture that conquered the world in a century. They say Islam means peace, and I know to hundreds of millions it does, but it is also a religion that was born a conqueror. From the death of Mohammad in 632 to the Battle of Tours in 732, the army coming out of the Arabian desert "converted" half the world in a only one hundred years, and you don't do that by handing out flyers and singing "k.u.mbaya."