America (In "Dictionary of World s Major Mistakes"):
1 - Portion of land which later became a country and now an Empire: too difficult to separate from other entries in this dictionary like "Shell", "Esso" or "MacDonalds".
2 - Idea created by religious fanatics from England who might - today - be called Christian Fundamentalists. Not happy with the way the Anglican Church was going (too open and too liberal for them) they decided to go away to another land and create freedom from scratch. That is why the notion of a Conservative Revolutionary makes sense to them in their "home - of the so called brave - on the hill".
3 - The name comes from an Italian (Americo Vespucio). Columbus actually made a mistake! He thought he was in India! Or ... maybe he did not make a mistake after all ... isn t the cast system so similar to what, say, happens to a black person in Alabama?
4 - From a certain point on (when the portion of land was already a country separated from England by a revolution which started - guess what - with tea!) there was a huge debate as to wether they should follow the declaration of independence or the constitution. Some enlightened minds called the attention upon one thing: some civil liberties were being reduced in the name of security. One of those people was - still is - a major philosopher: Henry David Thoreau. He said that given the climate of state (in)security (think of "the right to bear guns!) he would propose something diverse: the right to civil disobedience. Of course that was reduced from then on (you can get a lethal injection for that in Texas!). Nevertheless, he left a huge tradition of criticism that is today very high, with incredible names such as Vidal, Chomsky, DeLillo.
5 - Civil disobedience started being taken by minorities who thought they were excluded from the mainstream of White, Anglo-Saxon and Protestant capitalism in its still existing trend of selling out on everything that is public (including space, health, education, information, etc). Of course MLK was killed for denouncing all this ... so was JFK!
6 - Where do we stand now? In a country which proclaims itself as the bastion of freedom ... but at the same time has 6 million people in privately secured and owned jails - most of them Black or Latino, has an incredible record on the death penalty, has a major problem with unemployment (with people being laid off just because they think it is ethically wrong to consider their fellow workers as enemies in the same competitive rat-race) and has been exporting dictatorial regimes to every continent (think of September the 11th ... not that one you fool! The one in 1973, when they took down the legitimate government of Chile) not to mention other dangerous goods such as FAT (KFC, MAC) and the idea of chastity (miss America proclaims she is a virgin ... poor girl!).
Final note:
Look for other entries in the dictionary such as "Imperialism", "Puritanism", "Hiroshima", "Nagasaki", "Vietnam War", CIA, "Macarthism", "Capitalist Ethics", "Ronald Reagan", "Stallone", "Chuck Norris", "McVeigh" and "Napalm".
