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Entry: Addicted to Guilt Link: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/addicted_to_guilt#2586 Post contents: One of MLK's lines which Gerson quotes with approbation makes my brain hurt: ""...this creed of "amazing universalism" calls "America to do a special job for mankind and the world . . . because America is the world in miniature and the world is America writ large."" That's not universalism; it's American exceptionalism. Just what special dispensation makes the world "America writ large?" How about "New Zealand writ large?" From where I sit in Australia, one of the most attractive qualities of this country is its lack of any cultish exceptionalist "creed" even while it's one of the most decent and vital democracies in all of world history, not to mention an extraordinarily agreeable place to live. Then Gerson concludes with this rubbish savouring of the anti-christ: "Those ideals are defined by the Declaration of Independence. We have not always lived up to them. But we would not change them for anything on Earth." Leaving aside Gerson's intellectual sloppiness in defining those "ideals", from a Christian perspective the only intersection between temporality and unchangeable eternity occurred in circa 33 AD, not 1776. Sent at: 2008 05 16