Independence Day

I love being an American. I would never wish to be anything else. Everytime some newspaper or website reports on the latest poll about how much the rest of the world hates us, it makes me love being an American all the more. Perverse? Maybe, but I wouldn't trade places with anyone and I know that there are a lot of people living elsewhere who would gladly take my spot. I'll take those polls seriously when we start seeing similar reporting on how WE feel about everyone else. Maybe those polls are already being conducted and don't get reported because they come out too favorably (excepting the French of course but even to them I say on this fine Fourth of July, "Vive Lafayette! Vive La France!"). We Americans don't harbor a lot of ill-will towards the rest of the world, regardless of the enmity directed towards us.

Now that I'm done flag-waving, I thought I would post some of the quotes that I came across when I was posting my Happy Fourth of July message. They weren't really appropriate for my patriotic theme in the post below but they made me laugh or at least smile.

Americans always try to do the right thing -- after they've tried everything else.- - - Winston Churchill

Whoever wants to know the hearts and minds of America had better learn baseball. -- Jacques Barzun

For the American people are a very generous people and will forgive almost any weakness, with the possible exception of stupidity. -- Will Rogers

America is a country that doesn't know where it is going but is determined to set a speed record getting there. -- Lawrence J. Peter

Only in America - do drugstores make the sick walk all the way to the back of the store to get their prescriptions while healthy people can buy cigarettes at the front of the store. -- anonymous

Americans who travel abroad for the first time are often shocked to discover that, despite all the progress that has been made in the last 30 years, many foreign people still speak in foreign languages. -- Dave Barry

We Americans live in a nation where the medical-care system is second to none in the world, unless you count maybe 25 or 30 little scuzzball countries like Scotland that we could vaporize in seconds if we felt like it. -- Dave Barry

What the United States does best is to understand itself. What it does worst is understand others. -- Carlos Fuentes

America makes prodigious mistakes, America has colossal faults, but one thing cannot be denied: America is always on the move. She may be going to Hell, of course, but at least she isn't standing still. -- e.e. cummings

We Americans are the best informed people on earth as to the events of the last twenty-four hours; we are the not the best informed as the events of the last sixty centuries. -- Will Durant

The genius of you Americans is that you never make clear-cut stupid moves, only complicated stupid moves which make the rest of us wonder at the possibility that we might be missing something. -- Gamal Nasser

America... just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable. -- Hunter S. Thompson

American grammar doesn't have the sturdiness of British grammar (a British advertising man with a proper education can make magazine copy for ribbed condoms sound like the Magna goddam Carta), but it has its own scruffy charm.
-- Stephen King

America will tolerate the taking of a human life without giving it a second thought. But don't misuse a household pet. -- Dick Gregory

Americans are the only people in the world known to me whose status anxiety prompts them to advertise their college and university affiliations in the rear window of their automobiles. -- Paul Fussell

A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy but won't cross the street to vote in a national election. -- Bill Vaughn

The Clinton administration launched an attack on people in Texas because those people were religious nuts with guns. Hell, this country was founded by religious nuts with guns. Who does Bill Clinton think stepped ashore on Plymouth Rock? -- P.J. O'Rourke

And finally:

The Americans believe they answered all the questions in 1776, since then they 've just been hammering out the practical details. -- Anonymous