I love my country.  I thank God that I was blessed with the good fortune to be born in the United States of America.  Our Constitution has been the model for democratic movements throughout the world since it was first written over 200 years ago.  The racial and ethnic diversity in our country, and the ability of these diverse people to coexist peacefully with one another is unmatched by any other nation, which is no small feat, as we have seen in other nations that have been cobbled together over the past two centuries across ethnic lines.  The ability to stand up and criticize our government and its policies is something to be cherished; in too many places around the world, one can be thrown in jail for doing the same.  We are allowed the freedom to worship in the manner of our own choosing, with Catholic churches, Jewish temples, Muslim mosques, Mormon temples, Protestant houses of worship, and many others lining our city and country roads.  The individuality of our people, coupled with the entrepreneurial spirit encouraged by our leaders, has led to a myriad of advances in science, medicine, technology, and entertainment, unmatched in human history.  Our people are loved and admired by most of the other people on the planet; the generosity of our charities and the good works of our missionaries have saved countless lives in virtually every country in the world.  Plus, we invented jazz and baseball.
          While not an overly patriotic person, I have a healthy sense of pride for many of the things that originate from American ingenuity.  I don't want to tear down our government; it makes me sad to write some of what you are about to read.  I also don't want this to seem like a left-wing rant, in spite of espousing positions that might appear radically left to most conservative Christians.  While the secular left contains social and political positions that I tend to favor, I believe that they have made an almost fatal error in disavowing the spiritual and religious aspects that tend to be at the heart of many of these positions, ceding the field unnecessarily to the right.  Most disturbingly to me, the left, by and large, has thrown the "baby" Jesus out with the "bathwater" of conservative evangelical ideology. I hope to show that the decisions made by the administrations of both political parties since the end of World War II have been equally damaging to our standing in the world, and more importantly, not in keeping with Christian principals, or more specifically, don't pass the "What would Jesus do?" test.
          Why bother? Most people, Christians included, know that our government isn't, and has never been perfect. It has made some well-publicized mistakes; even the staunchest patriot would admit that.  Our government has never been asked to pass the "What would Jesus do" test, anyways.  It is secular, and despite having a born-again Christian in the White House for eight years, will remain secular.  I know that polities are not bound by the morals of individuals.  In the first fifty years of the twentieth century, our country was thrust into two world wars not of its making, and not of its choosing; however, as a nation we responded to both, and especially the second, with an astonishing vitality and strength that continues to be underestimated by our enemies.  And it was out of those two wars, and especially the second, that the United States emerged, partially by default, as the dominant power in the world.  The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 only confirmed that fact.
So...why bother?
          For starters, I've never been much of an activist.  I would've gone to some of the peace marches before the beginning of the Iraq War, but I didn't want to deal with the traffic and the parking.  Before starting this book, I had written exactly one letter of protest to the White House, concerning the above war, but I'm pretty sure that if it wasn't e-mail, and I would have had to find an envelope and a stamp, I wouldn't have done it.  I'm a songwriter, hardly the credential for writing the kind of thing I'm attempting here (as I have subsequently found out!) I've always loved history, and have probably read more than my fair share.  Reading a lot of history naturally led me to political science.  Reading political science has left me with many more questions than answers, and a troubling view of our government.  Frankly, the more I have read, the more disturbed I have become.
          I'm bothering because I feel deeply at odds with how to reconcile my Christian faith with many of the actions over the last 60-plus years of a government that supposedly represents this nation of overwhelmingly Christian believers.  There are several, if not many Christian and theological writers who have tackled this subject and who are more theologically equipped than I–the Reverend Jim Wallis and Rabbi Michael Lerner immediately come to mind.  One of the things I want to point out is that there is a large body of work available that presents a different view of the world than the rather narrow one that much of today's evangelical Christian leaders present.  Many of these ideas that are given as eternal truths, ones that are made out to have been around for as long as the Bible, have actually only been with us for a couple of hundred years or less.  Evangelical Christians, especially through the vehicle of the Christian bookstore, are pointed away from most literature that doesn't bow to the conservative point of view of the mainstream Evangelical hierarchy.  This "alternative" literature is painted as theologically unsound, even heretical, although the authors of these books oftentimes have considerably more Biblical knowledge and a more thorough theological background than those who question their veracity.  (This battle over what constitutes heresy has been going on since the first generation after Jesus died.)
          Another problem with finding any of this out, as well as being informed about other, alternative views of history seems to be that 21st century Americans live life on the run, and most people simply don't have the time to read anything close to the amount of books one would have to read to really get the whole picture.  So, they get their information in little snippets, fifteen minutes of radio here, a headline or an article in the newspaper there, thirty minutes of TV news at night, and maybe an internet website or two.  This information is a very narrow sliver of what is really going on in the world. It is made all the more narrow if all of the media that one watches, listens to, or reads is lined up to the same point of view.
          I'm bothering because I feel compelled to get to the bottom of why it seems like 95 out of 100 evangelical Christians are conservative Republicans, and I'm not.  I know that there are plenty of Christians out there who are not right-wing conservatives, but I'll be darned if I get to spend any time around them.  When I lived in Williamson County, Tennessee, the suburban area of choice for Nashville music types, I was playfully known as the county's only liberal.
          One of the main reasons for writing this book was that I frankly got tired of being the only person in the room who felt like I do about politics and I felt like I needed to equip myself better for the five-on-one or seven-on-one debates I constantly found myself in.  The funny thing about those "debates?" It seemed to me to be like two drunks fighting in a bar; a lot of swinging and missing by both sides and no one really knowing what the heck they're talking about. "The little snippets of information I've heard about say this!" "Oh yeah, well the five minutes of spin I heard last night said this!" It's like a bad game of "telephone," with bits and pieces of out-of-context sound bites being regurgitated and passed on by people who put their own spin on the spin.  This then is what often passes for political dialogue in our country.  I got sick of it all, including the sound of my own miserable voice.  Why do I believe what I believe? How did I get here, and you're over there? Where was that fork in the road? If considerably more credible information were easily available that refuted some long-held beliefs, would it have any effect on those beliefs?

I'm bothering because I want to know the answer to these questions:
* Why do a majority of people around the world like Americans, but hate the American government? There are a lot of conservatives out there who will either deny this, or will more likely counter that it doesn't matter what other people think.  I think it is true, I think it does matter, and I'll tell you why.
* What would cause 19 middle-class, Arab men, many of them well-educated, from countries that we call "friendly" to commit mass homicide, on a scale never before seen, against us? This is a crucial part of this book, and I have tried to present some history that shines some light on this question, in a form hopefully like The Idiot's Guide to Wahhabism, or The Middle East for Dummies.  Just because I'm fascinated with history doesn't mean most people are, and this is part of our national problem: the lack of knowledge about most areas of the world not called America or Europe.
* Why do many American people, including many Christians, seem to think that any version of history that refutes the version of history they were taught in school is left-wing propaganda? If there's anything I hope you take from this book, it is to become curious about the world we live in, and how we got where we are as a nation; and please, try not to listen to people who say that anything that doesn't conform to their narrow point of view is unpatriotic, or just America-bashing, or radical.  Actually, radical isn't bad.  Jesus was a radical, and I hope to present the radical idea of following Jesus's lead when we're thinking about how our nation acts in the world.
          I'm bothering because there were many things that I didn't know about our history and the actions of our government until I dug deeper to find them out.  I am not talking about wacky "Who Shot Kennedy?" conspiracy-theory type of books.  Our bookstores and libraries are teeming with well-researched, footnote-included, hard-to-refute books and publications from former government officers, retired CIA agents and military men, political scientists, foreign correspondents, research groups, man-on-the-street type compilations, timelines, Freedom of Information discoveries, theologians, histories of Congressional hearings, etc.  A lot of these books are dry, and full of facts and figures.  Many have decided points of view.  The rant stuff is easily dismissible, on both sides. I tend to discount the Michael Moores, Bill O'Reillys, Al Frankens, and the Rush Limbaugh-type books.  We spend way too much time on these... entertainers.  In any statistical study a mathematician would tell you to throw away the "outliers," and in this discussion, these guys are the outliers.
          I'm bothering because I've always felt out of step with both political parties, and frankly, have never known exactly where to place myself on the political spectrum.  If pinned to the wall, I would have to say that I'm certainly more left than right (oh really?)–Yeah, I know that isn't a shock–but, what I've found in my research is that in the last 60 years, there hasn't been a lot of difference between either Republicans or Democrats when it comes to foreign policy, and both of them have acted in ways that leave me grappling with many questions.
          In some ways, you could say that I am uniquely unqualified to be writing a book such as this.  I had exactly one semester of college under my belt when I started writing.  People that know me would readily agree that whatever else I may be, I am no theologian.  These kinds of books are most often written from either the lofty perch of academia, or the wizened pen of the Biblical scholar.  This, though, gives me the unique perspective of everybody else.  Everything that I have learned is readily available to anybody and everybody.
          I could say God laid it on my heart to say these things, but that would be heading down a path that I am always wary of.  I've heard many self-righteous people say "God told me to tell you so-and-so," and "so-and-so" turned out to be really, blatantly, and loudly wrong.  Oops! I do believe God is in the middle of this, as He is in all things.  I also know that the truth, as versus Truth, is a slippery customer.  Is truth objective, or subjective? In government and politics, it's most definitely the latter.  You could sit three people down, present them with all of these facts, and one would call them black, another white, and the third would say they are all shades of gray.  If one presents opinions, the question becomes, "where are the facts to support your opinions?" If one presents facts, the question becomes, "what are your sources for these facts?" If one presents data, the question then is, "where did you get the data, and is the data biased?" This type of skepticism, while healthy, stops many a discussion right in its tracks.  As long as it is applied in every direction, and not just aimed at the side in which you disagree, skepticism can be a good thing.  Skepticism unchecked can turn into cynicism, which is ultimately a dead-end street.
          New advances in neuroscience have discovered that long-term concepts that structure the way that we think are embedded in our synapses.  Someone telling us a fact cannot change long-term concepts such as these.  Facts have to fit with the concepts already in our synapses.  Otherwise, they go in one ear, and out the other.  New facts aren't even heard, or if they are, they're labeled as irrational, or crazy.  I challenge anyone who reads this to indeed check the facts, do research of your own, come to your own educated conclusions.  What concerns me the most are those who use our sound bite culture to determine their stance on the important issues that we face as a nation.  This is whom I am aiming this book at.  Am I right? Am I wrong? All I know for sure is that I am a Christian, and I am struggling with these things.  
          This book presents what many people would call the "other" side of looking at government and its policies and actions.  Why not present both sides? Until a couple of years ago I didn't really even know there was another side.  We all hear about the left's side and the right's side, and media bias from both sides, but the popular, mainstream information available from textbooks in high school, to the news on TV, in magazines, newspapers, books, and in movies, is by and large telling the same story.  That is the only story I had ever heard.  I knew in the back of my mind that there was another version of the truth out there, but I had been so conditioned by my acculturation to treat it as a lunatic fringe, that I was almost frightened to approach it.  What I found, much to my surprise, was a whole alternate universe full of intelligent, sensible, and moral people dedicated to trying to get the truth out over the din of the mainstream media.  
          Is there a lunatic fringe? Of course there is, on the left, and on the right. They do nothing to further intelligent debate but clog up the drains.  Try to keep in mind, though, that just because some opinion or piece of information is outside our normal realm of thinking, it does not ipso facto mean it came from the lunatic fringe.  This is a crucial point to consider if one wants to get anything out of reading this book.
          One problem for me with writing a book like this is that the very people that I would like to read it are also the very people, because of their own deeply embedded concepts, that are most likely to be turned off by its premise.  For example, if I was to put the word "liberal" in the title, unless it was clear by the rest of the title that it was an indictment of Liberalism, the book would almost certainly not even be carried by Christian bookstores, no matter how much Christian content it contains. (If you have bought this book from a Christian bookstore, I stand pleasantly corrected.)  On the other hand, to the extent that the book gets a readership, it is likely to be among people that already believe as I do, and you hence get the "preaching to the choir" effect.  This, sadly, is not unusual, and is why there are parallel universes even amongst people who call themselves Christians.
          If you consider yourself a conservative Christian and have stumbled upon this book, or if you are not religious at all but are intrigued by the premise, I urge you to put aside your presumptions and preconceptions for awhile and at least give a listen to an alternative point of view.

For...

"To state the facts frankly is not to despair the future nor indict the past."
          -John F. Kennedy
and,

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter"
          -Martin Luther King