I'm a conservative, and I LOVE this country and what it stands for, and yes, it does stand for something good. It is very easy to be cynical. The government has been extremely wasteful and increasingly corrupt both in how it handles war and in how it mismanages social programs (often deliberately, to create a perceived need for itself).

The human race has always worked like this, and it's awful. But you know what, the government is not this country. I AM this country! My father, who came from Cuba and served in the military is this country. The Christian Quaker who hid slaves on the underground railroad, his family IS the heritage of this country.

We, the people, with blood and grit more so than words, stopped the Nazis, and prevented the spread of Communism across several continents. We were the ones willing to fight a war against our own brothers in order to vanquish slavery, the only such war ever fought, where it was not a slave uprising, but an uprising of conscience.

We do these things, not because they are easy, but because they are right. We do these things because that's who we are, and we do them often not because we believe in our government, but because we believe in a transcendent truth that G-d created all men equal, and that our Creator has given us certain rights which no government has a right to withhold. Often, as in the case of George Washington, we do these things against the legal decrees of government--and in spite of whether or not government approves.

This is my perspective--no more, no less.