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It is a very easy thing to hate the United States of America right now. But why? We stormed the beaches at Normandy, saved Europe from economic ruin with the Marshall plan (thanks for paying off the loan, Norway. Anybody else? Anybody? Bueller?), invented the Internet, uprooted tyrants, and give foreign aid away like it was candy. We want to be the good guys and thought we were. Yet we just can't seem to get any love these days.

The United States is the inventor and only wartime practitioner of nuclear weapons (never mind that using them prevented an invasion that would make the Iraqi insurgency look like a blowjob. "Operation Downfall", the now-declassified US plan to invade Japan, estimated 1 Million American casualties alone). Lax security protocols (and clever spying) spread the secret to the USSR and after that the genie got out of the bottle.

The United States has the most advanced army in the world. We station our military in other countries at their "request", which is a source of much seething and hurt national pride. From Banana Republics, to the Cold War, to the War on Terror, we routinely interfere in the business of other countries to make the world safe for our interests, whether anybody asked for it or not. Even if the intentions are both right and good, many countries resent our involvement in their affairs on sheer principle: they'd rather just fuck up.

Here are ten good reasons why thinking Americans should love their country:

10. Entertainment
The movies the world watches, the television shows they tune into, and the music they listen to are, for the most part, produced in the United States. For instance, the U.S. exports more than 25 times the number of movies and television shows than it consumes from abroad, a fact that causes Ben Wattenberg to observe quite correctly that America is "the most culturally potent nation in the world." Even the virulent America-hater Saddam Hussein reportedly spends a good portion of his time watching American-made movies such as The Godfather and Enemy of the State.

9. Immigration
During the hundred years ending in the 1920s, a majority of the world's immigrants came to one lone country: the United States. Today, the U.S. takes in more immigrants than at any point in its history. Yet, the Left portrays America as a bastion of xenophobia and bigotry. Alexander Hamilton (the first Secretary of the Treasury), John Jacob Astor (America's first multimillionaire), Alexander Graham Bell (invented the telephone), Louis B. Mayer (Hollywood pioneer), Selman Waksman (cured tuberculosis), and Ralph Baer (invented the video game) are among the immigrants to America whose lives belie the Left's premise. Just as those who complain about "oppression" in the U.S. would never entertain the idea of living anywhere else, the people around the world we allegedly oppress flock to come here. This contradiction between leftist theory and real-world practice illustrates just how delusional the central tenets of leftist thought really are.

8. Technology
Nothing disproves the Leftist mantra that "all cultures are equal" more than technology does. Americans have given the world motion pictures, the telephone, the television, the computer, the Internet, the airplane, the VCR, and a host of other machines and devices that have vastly improved the quality of life on the planet. Ironically, the terrorists who hate the U.S. give America a tacit endorsement every time they turn on a light, escape the heat through air conditioning, monitor their exploits on television or the internet, or communicate via telephone.

7. Creating Wealth
America is the sun around which the world economy revolves. The typical creator of wealth in the world is an American. Foreigners benefit from buying better products from American companies and working better jobs manufacturing such products. Take America's $9 trillion dollar economy out of the picture, and the economic well being of the rest of the world nose-dives.

6. Generosity
With great wealth comes great generosity. In 2000, Americans gave more than $200 billion in charity, dwarfing the amount donated elsewhere. Since World War II, the U.S. government has given well in excess of $500 billion (not adjusted for inflation) in foreign aid. Last year, our government distributed more than $20 billion to 130 countries. While American taxpayers have a right to gripe, what are we to make of foreign beneficiaries who return our favor by burning U.S. flags and chanting "death to America"?

5. Human Achievement
Americans have stretched the bounds of the possible. The first transatlantic flight, putting a man on the moon, breaking the speed of sound, constructing the Hoover Dam, and building the Panama Canal serve as testimony to American courage and ingenuity. It wasn't Danes or Bolivians or Iranians or Koreans who achieved these feats. It was Americans. This is significant.

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