Of Thee I Sing

Suharto, former dictator of Indonesia, recently died. During his regime, while a U.S. ally, he murdered as many as a million of his countrymen who opposed him. We do have a habit of choosing strange bedfellows.

First, American Idol became our national obsession, then Dancing With the Stars---are any people on the planet shallower than we?

If I were Canadian, I'd vote to enclose my homeland in a giant impenetrable bubble, to lock out the environmental and cultural pollution emanating from our neighbor to the south.

U.S. food and water supplies are contaminated. Our infrastructure is crumbling. Our economy is collapsing. Our health is failing. So are our students. Our friends are becoming fewer, our enemies stronger. Ronald Reagan's "shining house on a hill" has become an edifice with a cracked foundation, peeling paint, and a leaky roof.