Okay, so if I count to ten, I'll be able to get over this and be the most patient man in the world. But here's the thing ...How is it that some U.S. conservatives believe that they are patriotic, while their opponents are not? Don't liberals and moderates serve their country, too? Don't they also give back to and support their neighbors and communities? Don't they also enlist in the armed forces and risk everything in battle? Don't they also work to change laws so that citizens don't have their water, air and soil polluted by dangerous chemicals that give people cancers and cause birth defects? 

Maybe I don't know what I'm talking about. But didn't a few dozen guys, supported by their wives and families, stand up against established power and create a new country, a place where we were supposed to do better than what had come before? Wasn't the U.S. supposed to be, in some ways, more than a country? Wasn't it supposed to be a concept, an ideal, something that we might never quite reach, but would always strive for? To get just a little bit closer ...

And how is it that the word "Christian" has been allowed to become synonymous with fundamentalist sects of Christianity only? I guess Presbyterians, Methodists, Episcopalians, Quakers, Catholics and others are no longer "Christian"? That might have come as a shock to the men and women who founded this country 230 years ago. 

I don't get it. Because I believe in other people's right to speak their views, to be conservative, liberal or whatever, to support our government or question it, to believe or not believe in God, to love whomever they love, to embrace their families or break away from their past, to live their lives as they see fit, so long as they do no harm to others - does that make me an un-American, godless heathen? 

That's messed up. 

And it's also more than "just one thing" for me to get over. Counting to ten won't do it. I'll count to a thousand.