Esteemed Little Hawk:

This nation, like yours, is riddled with ideologies of various kinds. It has been true for centuries that the lumpenpolitik hold ideas which extend little further than their waistlines. There have always been those fixated to obsession on commercial success alone. There have always been the small numbers whose obsessions tend toward more destructive notions.

None of these things constitutes American ideology. The ideology of the nation, in toto, is anchored in the forming documents of the nation: The Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and the Consitution. This ideology is explicated in the papers of Paine, Jefferson, Adams, Lincoln, and a handful of others; it informs the essays of de Tocqueville and it is at bottom what prompted the amazing statements of respect and endearment from nations around the world after the latest villainy on 11 September.

The superiority of "American ideology" only obtains when it reflects those things and the respect for individual voice, individual merit and individual ability which underlie them. That is the only ideology I think worthy of the name of "American ideology". And hopefully the only really enduring one running through our history. Abuse it though we may.

To the best of my knowledge, the United States was the first nation to be founded on principle. Certainly the first to be founded on those principles!

The fact that we have many citizens who have grown dull-witted with physical comfort and odious public media does not change what the nation's ideology is about; it only retards the dissemination and growth of that ideology.

I think, however, that I can speak for thousands of Americans in saying that we are not walking the earth or being a nation in order to acheive comfort; we are here to participate in the biggest human experiment ever undertaken and prove it a successful experiment: to test whether the notion of freedom can breed social, personal, economic, and philosophical success. That's the principle, the trial and the challenge that murmurs in the background no matter which soap opera is playing on the TV.

Regards,

A