Our tarnished image as the voracious imperialist occupying power of jack-booted thugs gallivanting around the globe has single-handedly been redeemed by the Redeemer Himself. Halleluiah. Maya Angelou was on the verge of tears when she realized that, now, she no longer had to feel ashamed when she traveled abroad. I’m not sure every American traveler has suffered that stigma. Naturally, if you frequent the salons of Paris, you’re liable to encounter intellectuals and Marxists who might make you feel embarrassed for having an American passport. But I just can’t believe that Americans are met with chants of “Yankee go home” wherever they travel.

Of course, this is all patently absurd. I’ve never bought into the notion that America, that shining city on a hill, had somehow, in the course of seven years, morphed into universal Boogey Man, scorned by erstwhile friends and intractable foes alike. Inspired by a Mr. Rogers sentimentality, a chorus of apologia was sung ad nauseam by Leftists (who hate America in the first place) and their lackeys in the media throughout the 2008 election season. In the Video Age it’s possible for reiterated nonsense to sometimes become “conventional wisdom”. This self-deprecating strain of “patriotism” was a recurrent theme throughout Obama’s campaign. Delivering his epic speech to a throng of inebriated Germans in Berlin, Obama showed great contrition and shame for being an American. He quickly reassured his audience that he was also (perhaps, above all) a citizen of the World. Had the election been held that day (in Germany), Obama would have won easily.

In truth, this liberal hand-wringing bent for psychoanalysis and a propensity for self-loathing pre-dates George W. Bush. President Bill Clinton went out of his way to formally apologize for slavery. The Democrats have long been obsessed with and invested in America’s failure (moral and otherwise) on all fronts because they subsist on the votes of the disgruntled. They proudly give safe haven to myriad victims, citizens all, of evil America. And Marxist professors have long decried American imperialism and the evils of free market capitalism.

I would never deny that our nation has not always been above reproach. Slavery, the Civil War, broken Indian treaties, systemic racism and bigotry are all historical realities. As a conservative, I have the capacity to recognize evil— even America’s sins— in this world. I take a restrained— if not dim— view of completely unfettered human nature. So yes, America has failed morally at times. But the Left refuses to see the bigger picture. The American “experiment” in self-governance (tempered by religious sensibilities) is a singular achievement in the history of Man. In spite of America’s short-comings, people from all corners of the globe still long to come to her shores, to the land of freedom in search of a better life. Yet there are those in this country that, in a spirit of “fairness”, would prefer to reduce America to the lowest common denominator rather than elevate others to our own lofty ideal.

It’s certainly possible to acknowledge that there are some people in the world that don’t particularly like us without buying into this promoted myth that everybody hates us. Even the popular— perhaps particularly the popular— may still have enemies. Here’s a news flash for Barry: Islamo-militants will continue to hate us and plot our destruction whether you’re the Leader of the Free World or not. Their irrational animosity toward the United States is rooted in a tradition of intolerance and a pathological hatred of Israel. Try to transcend that with your cult of personality.

The real boogey man in this story is insidious multiculturalism along with its evil cousin, moral equivalency. It’s one thing to recognize and honor laudable features of other cultures. It’s quite another to conclude that all cultures and peoples are inevitably of equal worth*. To be fair, even liberals recognize this principle (though they don’t realize it) when they praise Cuba but disparage their own fellow citizens like Evangelical Christians. Pragmatically, we all, liberals and conservatives alike, make value judgments about others and often discriminate on that basis. Multiculturalism is a bogus artifact from Academia that promotes a phony and perverse “equality” at the expense of genuine freedom. Diversity inevitably degenerates into balkanization, identity politics and victimization. In the end, nobody is happy (much less unified).

*One clarification: while all human beings are intrinsically of equal value in the eyes of the Creator, they and the cultures they eventually develop needn’t be (of necessity) qualitatively equal as history is played out in a fallen— or, if you prefer, Darwinian— world.

This pressing emotional need to be liked by everybody strikes me as rather juvenile. Little kids feel less insecure when they are popular in school or on the playground. It’s as if the beauty contestant America could easily win the pageant but prefers to settle for Miss Congeniality, just happy to be voted likeable by her competitors. One is reminded of the pathetic Sally Fields, upon winning an Oscar, gushing to the audience, “You like me! You really, really like me!” Grow up. At least she managed to win something. I wonder how she dealt with the liberal guilt of offending the others by her sin of simply winning when they did not. Maybe the other nominees didn’t like poor Sally as much as the rest of America apparently did.

I’m not suggesting that the United States should go out of its way to deliberately make enemies. We would all prefer to coexist in a peaceful world. But the truth is America will always be envied— and, yes, in some cases hated— by others precisely because of her exceptional greatness and a national character that cherishes and elevates freedom as its highest principle. It is this very love of freedom that most incenses the Islamo-Nazis.

In our perverse desire to be introspective and reflective, we’ve become self-loathing. Taking a moral inventory from time to time may be healthy, but to eagerly embrace the suicidal notion that we, as a nation, are unequivocally evil is dysfunctional and bizarre. If our national self-esteem depends on being liked by the rest of the world, Mr. Rogers notwithstanding, we’ve lost our way.