I discovered America scarcely forty years ago in text-book illustrations of ancestral European sailors upon the sea, and in war movies.  I learned about America in civics books, and in history classes, and in the news.  I grew with America throughout the turmoil of the Sixties and on, through the many agonies and confusions since.  She has been my pride; I have tolerated a great deal of inadequacy and imperfection in her over the years, because she is the land that saved the World.  She stood up to invasion and conquest, and she opposed those who would build their empires upon the wreckage of freedom.  Even in the midst of very real peril, and though her heart was chilled in fear's icy grip, she nonetheless stood brave and proud—like that green lady in the harbor—and she faced down enemies bent on world domination, like Tojo and Hitler—the most daunting foes of freedom this world had ever known. 

How could I not love such a thing?  How could I do anything but honor, and promote, and seek to emulate the courage and devotion to higher purpose that once defined my nation, the United States of America?  How could I relinquish such a mortally precious thing, and still be alive? 

George W. Bush is how. 

My nation now smiles upon invasion and conquest, and seeks to build its empire upon the wreckage of freedom.  The nation I love, always a leader among nations, always luminous and inspiring, has become the peril; the United States is now the power bent on world domination.  My heart has broken.  My country 'tis of thee no longer, but of them, the few who own everything.  A darkness has befallen that great, bright, gleaming hope which my nation once defended against all assaults, a light tended and preserved simply for the sake of its own beauty, which once gave illumination to the whole world.  That hope, which my country offered to every human heart striving toward freedom, is gone. 

Yet I am still here; my heart continues to beat. 

When an end has come, a new beginning is near.  This is the light beneath all other lights, this is the hope upon which all other hopes set their foundations.  So, with this moment pregnant with potential, why should I stay?  Why shoudn't I renounce my citizenship and emigrate to more hopeful climes, leaving the hollow Lady Liberty behind?  Or, with rather more finality, why should I not just eat a bullet?  I never understood Nathan Hale's quote, "I regret that I have but one life to give for my country."  I always thought that life, an essential thing, could not possibly become entangled with incidentals like government or love; life is the pallette upon which the colors of our lives are mixed; it remains distinct, or so I thought.  When, as a child, I first learned of Nathan Hale and his final words, I knew then only how brave he was; I had not then begun to understand why he was so brave. 

Dulcinea was the hope and the dream of Don Quixote, draped upon the form of a barmaid-whore named Aldonza.  Some would say that the barmaid-whore was real, and what Quixote saw in her—his vision—was not.  But I say our hopes and our dreams are as real—if not more so—than the forms upon which we paint them.  And so, it leaves with us a dichotomy: What we hope, and how we dream matters not at all—and at the same time it matters totally.  Our vision of the things we love transforms the things we love intrinsically, not just superficially.  We will always be compromized by the vagaries of incompetent statesman and talented megalomaniacs—but never so, our dreams and our hopes.  Bush and company can take our freedoms; they have and will continue to subvert law and justice; and in even darker days to come they may actually rewrite the Constitution.  No matter what they do to the United States of America, they will never take from me my vision of a free nation that offers justice for all, and defends peace.  This vision is my country, and I regret that I have but one life to give for it. 

If I were in a world of sterile logic, where my actions had effects on none but me, I would look around today, in late November, 2004, and I would eat a bullet.  But my actions affect more than only me, there is you, whoever you may be: A single parent in a housing project; a millionaire shooting-up in a yacht; a student at a college where one year's tuition is more than I make in three years; a saint in a jail cell; a monster in the White House; a future patriot seeking to preserve a precious ideal, or a future revolutionary seeking to establish a New Order.  All of these might be affected by what I say or do, to some degree.  And so, because of you—each of you—I will not throw this life away, just yet.  For you, whoever you may be, and I, we are none but pilgrims, and if we choose to stay alive, then we must continue to progress together through this most perilous misadventure.