Oh, feel free. I've spent far too much time thinking about this sort of thing.

I used to hate America. I used to swear up and down that I would leave when I grew up and go somewhere else and not have to put up with the egotistical bull that swamps our entire national identity. Then I actually, you know, tried to leave. And spent the worst two months of my entire life discovering that, for all that amongst those I know in the States, I'm one of the more culturally aware, open-minded, and well-traveled people, I was completely, totally, and utterly unprepared to actually survive on my own in a foreign country.

Do I still want to leave? Yeah, sometimes. But dammit, this is my country. I was born here, for better or for worse. Why shouldn't I want to be able to change it to something that more closely resembles the ideals of freedom that it taught me? Why should I be told to leave by bumper stickers, policies, and yeah, people, just because I don't like the direction our government is taking? Have they completely forgotten why this country even exists?

Yeeeeah. Sometimes I want to come back to questions like that with "why do you hate intelligent thought?"