Lovin' this Country

This weekend I went to a wedding reception where the groom was Hindu and the bride was Muslim (the happy couple are both American born, their parents are immigrants). Why was I there? The groom’s sister married my brother (Anglo Christian) four years ago. For more cross-religious romance, I can look to my wife’s side where her Roman Catholic uncle married a Jewish woman (he later converted).

I don’t have to say all of this happened in America. You know it happened in America because where else does this happen regularly and with no fanfare? Not only do these kinds of marriages occur every weekend, they occur without so much as the thought they might lead to violence. Sure, not every family is as warmly welcoming as those involved in my ever-growing list of relations, but our culture supports this blending of peoples and traditions like no other. Being American is not about ethnicity or religion or country of birth -- it's a moral and intellectual ideal to which anyone can subscribe.

At our best, we are a wonderful people with a magnanimous culture. It doesn’t and it shouldn’t take grand events to make us proud of who we are and where we live. Sometimes, just a few cocktails with new relations is enough to make you thankful to be American.

We Interupt This Election to Bring You ... The President of the United States

While we’re all bickering over who should be the next president, the current president still has a few things to say. Of course, we’ve heard almost all of it before.

Bush is against taxes. He’s in favor of continuing military operations in Iraq. He’s theoretically in favor of combating global warming but is against doing anything that could conceivably hurt business. He’s for education spending, particularly for helping out faith-based schools. And on and on.

He did encourage quick passage of the stimulus package – proving once again he’s about as fiscally sound as a teenager with Daddy’s credit card (with this congress, he’s in good company). He also came out against earmarks, although that emphasis was probably added as a way to focus criticism on the Democratic congress and their quickly broken promise of significantly curtailing such budgetary tricks.

Bush has always been a man of big ideas but tonight felt quiet and small. A lame duck president facing an oppositional congress has little hope of achieving anything significant in his final year. He can only reaffirm his priorities while reminding everyone the next guy (or gal) has yet to take office. Bush did just that and nothing more.

Historians will long debate this president’s legacy but one thing is inarguable: the man has great confidence in his own judgment. Right or wrong, good or bad, he’s standing firm until the end. Those crying for change will get no satisfaction until the next president takes over.