Why do you love, hate America?

After surfing the Orkut galaxy, I got bored and decided to post some questions in the US of A forum to see what enlightenment I could gather from people within the community.

Question: Why do you love, hate America? First, here are some of the positive responses below:

Lady Quixotic: Personally...I love my country because of its freedom and spirit...But I don't really hate anything about my country...only the few spots of ignorance here and there...

Eduardo: I like the fact that most of the taxpayers money go to services and programs that really see the money (in my country of origin this doesn't always happen).

What I don't like is the fact that the culture of this country does not always coincide with my own. I miss my Latin America culture but only until I'm hit with ignorant remarks by Brazilian-communists here on Orkut.

Although these two seemed to appreciate everything about America not every Orkut member had a favorable viewpoint towards the US.

Paul: Ou[r] "emissions standards" may be better than most countries, but when you look at the pollutants we put into the atmosphere per capita, we suck. We are the United F**** States, we should be leading the way when it comes to the environment. We shouldn't have to be dragged kicking and screaming into cleaning up our environment. And I'm not talking about our failure to sign the Kyoto treaty....which is biased against us anyway.

Two things I love about my country:

1)Freedom of Speech.
2)Our Women.

Two things I hate:

1)Our jingoistic foreign policy.
2)The religious Right.

Paul and Lady Quixotic later on had a mini debate over whether the media was liberally biased and if Fox News was a GOP strong arm (Editor's note: are they?). But perhaps the best forum from this discussion was from Rochelle:

The thing I love the most about America is that we see our mistakes and deal with them openly.

It took a long to end slavery...way too long. And even now, as we can see from the aftermath of Katrina, we still have a long way to go.

But at least the base of goodness is there. We have a direction that we're all moving towards. We're a nation of people trying to do the right thing--only we don't always agree on what that is.

So is America a nation whose good intentions have built up a great society, or are those intentions destroying the world? You decide.