I found this post by DougJ over at Balloon Juice amusing.

There was a lot of chest-thumping, or weasel-whacking or monkey-strangling or what have you, about the awesomeness of the United States among the wingerati over the past few days. Rich Lowry declared that the United States is the best because we are the best, no one rocks as hard as we do, bitch.

Our greatness is simply a fact. Only the churlish or malevolent can deny it, or even get irked at its assertion.

Bill Kristol then gave Lowry some kind ironic boo-yah about the fact that Obama talked about how great the US is right after Lowry wrote his column.

The exchange was fairly typical of what passes for high-brow conservatism these days. And yet there are those who [wonder] why conservatism has such little appeal for intellectually-inclined voters.

I would think that the degree of greatness bestowed upon a people or nation has everything to do with who is doing the defining as well as how greatness is defined.  Here is one way to look at it from a post I wrote a year and a half ago.

…a reminder of what makes the United States a great nation.

Strip aside all of the surface layers to get to the raw essence of a person’s being and it will always be the traits of empathy and compassion which best defines who they are.

The same can equally be said of nations.

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