What Makes America Great for an International Student

I'm writing this as a response to the anti-American sentiment rising around the world in the past several years. I made many American friends during my 8 years vacation in the US, they are of diverse ethnicities and from different backgrounds, most of them are open minded, intelligent and compassionate. What I admire most in them is how critical they are of their own country and how sympathetic they are with people from the Third World. Sometimes I ended up defending the American Empire against my American friends. As I often said, what the US is doing in the world today, even including Iraq, is actually less cruel and exploitative than what the European countries did in the colonial era, or the Ottoman Empire or the Roman Empire further back in the history. Yes there is discrimination and inequality in the US, but there is a reason many people would still migrate to the US: other governments can be even more repressive and unfair towards their own citizens than the US towards the immigrants!

My friends often feel ashamed of having G.W.Bush as their president, who is indeed one of the worst leaders in the world's history. But it's not their fault. They have participated in the protests against Bush and they voiced their dissent in many public media. Actually it's quite impressive that half of the Americans didn't vote for Bush in 2004. I don't think many countries would behave better in the same situation.

Many Europeans have a sense of moral superiority and a contempt for American public. But Europe, when it had power, didn't hesitate to drag the world into WWI and WWII. Even today, nationalism and racism are still pervasive in many EU countries, so I see no evidence that the Europeans are generally more enlightened than Americans. In other areas, from the Middle East to Asia, anti-American sentiment are often used by authoritarian governments to fuel nationalism and make America the scapegoat of their internal problems. Again, I see no evidence that people in these areas embrace progressive values more than Americans.

There are many people in the US, represented by Bush, Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh etc, who replace patriotism with nationalism, replace moral values with religious fundamentalism, and replace egalitarianism with anti-intellectualism. They are disgusting and dangerous. But such people exist in every country. The sad thing is such people are calling my friends, who are striving to improve America, un-American and un-patriotic. I hope my friends will fight back, and take back the power to define American-ness. For me, my friends are the true Americans. And their values, from peace to justice to environmentalism, are what makes America great. And I hope the International community would see that anti-Americanism is not constructive, instead, we all would benefit if we help the liberals in the US to make the country better.