You want to see a piece of real American history? Check this out. When you get there, click on "Gallery of Photos". This was a famous museum exhibition a few years ago. People with sensitive stomachs should not click here, and young children should not see this. This is what we had to overcome, all of us Americans, and we're not all the way finished with overcoming it. But the great majority of us are pretty decent people, and we're doing what we can. As for the rest of you, please don't condemn us without remembering the similar horrors in your recent pasts. You have to confront the past head-on if you're going to make any real changes in your society. This is why I am a moderate libertarian conservative. I firmly believe that a representative democracy with the rule of law, a Constitution, and a Bill of Rights, with government as limited as possible and individual freedom as extensive as possible, and with emphasis on the rights of life, liberty, property, and, yes, Jefferson was right, the pursuit of happiness, is the way to promote everybody's well-being. If I weren't convinced that democratic capitalism is the best system for everyone, the rich and the poor, the Americans and the Mozambicans, then I wouldn't be in favor of it.

And I hate those evil people who monopolize power without respecting the intrinsic human rights supposedly guaranteed to everyone by democratic capitalism. I can live with some dictatorships, though I don't love them--but reasons of state sometimes take precedence. You think I like being allied with Musharraf, for example? Hell, no, but sometimes you just have to hold your nose. There are some dictatorships that are so evil they must be crushed, though, like the Allies crushed the Axis or like NATO crushed Communism. I seriously think that the point has come where it is time to say that enough is enough and, since we helped to get rid of our former dictator friends like Marcos, Duvalier, Somoza, Pinochet, Chun Doo Hwan, and Trujillo, who apparently got so out of control even the Americans couldn't stand him anymore and had a CIA hit squad knock him off, it's about time we got rid of the former Soviet satellite governments in Iraq, Syria, and Libya, as well as the goddamn Saudis. We can do it. We've got the men, we've got the ships, we've got the money too, as the old rhyme went.. Come on, you international Leftists. How can you possibly defend these regimes that not only tyrannize their own people but also pose a threat to their neighbors? Anyone really in favor of human rights would be jumping up and down and screaming "Three cheers for the 101st Airborne and the Desert Rats!" as they captured brutal jailers and secret police assassins while rolling straight to Baghdad, Damascus, and when we get through with them, Riyadh. Note that I didn't mention Iran; I'm convinced that they're evolving toward democracy, maybe a sort of weird kind of it--imagine a country with free elections but a rather modernized version of the sharia law code. Iran was never a Soviet stooge; they hated the Soviets even more than the Americans, and I think they're salvagable without violence. As for the rest of them, somebody needs to let them know that flights to the French Riviera are quite cheap and it might be real smart for them to be on the next one.