232 Reasons Why America Kicks Ass!!!

(this is an unordered list, the numbering is only there to help me keep track, and may take all weekend to complete, will update throughout, until I reach #232, also some of these reasons may not be unique to America, or originated in America, but dammit, we do it better in America)

001) When people refer to America, they don't mean all of North America, any of South America, but the U S of A, and that Kicks Ass
002) Ice Cream Sandwiches Kick Ass
003) The First Amendment Kicks ALL Sorts of Ass (bet you wish your lousy country had one!)
004) The Second Amendment not only Kicks Ass, but Takes Names
005) Las Vegas, Nevada
006) We are a nation founded on text foremost, not an ethnic, religious or cultural identity
007) We prefer Football over Soccer
008) I Can Has Cheezbugers (Couldn't have started anywhere else)
009) The Whole George Clinton Parliament-Funkadelic Mothership Connection
010) Drive-In Fast Food
011) Silicon Valley
012) Porn Valley
013) Hidden Valley Ranch
014) The Opportunity to Succeed (and to Fail)
015) We Landed on the Freakin' Moon (though China might beat us back there)
016) Basketball (and that 2008 Gold Medal is Ours, hand it over now)
017) Bugs Bunny
018) Charity (Our charitable giving dwarves all other nations)
019) Faith (We are uniquely faithful compared to like mature democracies)
020) Hope (We are also uniquely hopeful in the aggregate, despite what some polls might say)
021) The United States Armed Forces (The Most Kick Ass Military Ever)
022) Separation of Powers
023) Parker & Stone
024) Chewing Gum
025) Herman Melville (no really, he does kick a lot of ass)
026) Gibson Guitars
027) USNS Mercy, and the USNS Comfort (does France have converted tankers as naval hospital ships, I think not)
028) A truly Free Press
029) Fireworks on Independence Day

That's enough for now, 1/8th done, 7/8ths to go, more to come . . .

030) Wide open spaces
031) Dense urban jungles
032) Sprawling suburbs
033) Bucolic college towns
034) Flinty New Englanders
035) Hopsitable Southerners
036) Taciturn Midwesterners
037) Laid Back West Coasters
038) Edgy Urban Dwellers
039) Coffee for Breakfest
040) Pancakes for Dinner
041) Hamburgers
042) Hot Dogs
043) BBQ
044) BB Guns
045) BB King
046) Lucille
047) Apple Pie
048) Key Lime Pie (Much better than Apple)
049) The Fender Stratocaster (I included Gibson, got to give Fender som love, too)
050) Science Fiction and Fantasy Novels (not exclusively American, but the biggest market, and many of the best writers are from the US of A)
051) "Our Worst Critics Prefer to Stay"
052) Noah Webster (saved us from the tyranny of the extra "u" along with other annoying spelling quirks)
053) Big Box Retailers
054) Amazon.com
055) Woot!
056) Conspicuous Consumption
057) Parsimonious Rectitude
058) Lazy Sundays

1/4 of the way down, 3/4 to go. This would have been a lot easier to do back in 1855, or so . . .

059) PIXAR
060) Apple (even though I kind of hate them)
061) Microsoft (even though everyone else kind of hates them)
062) IBM
063) Ford (what's left, anyway)
064) GM (also, what's left)
065) Hollywood (most of the time, sometimes they do the opposite of kicking ass)
066) Milton Friedman
067) Dizzy Gillespie
068) Frank Lloyd Wright
069) Free Enterprise
070) Relatively low taxation when compared to other advanced democracies
071) We're not Canada! (just kidding, Canada, though 'We're not America' seems to sit near the top of the 'why Canada Kicks Ass, Eh' list)
072) Oprah Winfrey
073) Surfing
074) Skateboarding
075) NASCAR
076) The Statue of Liberty (a gift from France, but imbued with meaning by our Freedoms)
077) The Golden Gate Bridge (plenty of other bridges around the world, but few are better looking)
078) Hoover Dam (plenty of other dams, some bigger since, but nothing of that scope attempted back then
079) Empire State Building (we built plenty of cool stuff in the 30s)
080) Ragtime
081) Dixieland
082) Delta Blues
083) Swing
084) Bebop (sorry Fusion, you miss this list)
085) Rock & Roll
086) Hip Hop
087) Country Music

3/8 done, plenty more Kick Ass awesomeness to mention, (and really, given the loose categories and definitions, this list could go into the hundreds of thousands, we kick that much ASS, in America) . . .

Reasons 088) through 232)

I believe a full 5/8ths of why America Kicks Ass, and has cause to Kick Out the Jams whenever our collective Birthday comes up has to do with the founding principles on which we were created. Classical Liberalism wasn't something that had been tried before, and it has worked brilliantly every where people have committed to making it work. Communism on the other hand, nothing but misery. Even Communisms slightly less offensive cousin, Socialism, isn't exactly all its cracked up to be. The basic founding principles of our nation were crafted with an awareness of human nature, both to harness the good that we can produce, and also to rein in our negative tendencies. Our founding father's weren't perfect, but looking back at the other revolutions of the period, we seriously lucked out (and by extention so did the rest of the world)

The United States, since its inception has been a force for the betterment of the lives of everyone on the planet, we haven't been perfect, there are still many imperfections both at the government level, and of our people, but the proof of our goodness can be seen in who our enemies have been, and who our allies have become. Have a war with the UK, that's OK, someday you'll be our Atlantic Partner, help destroy Germany, that's OK, we're buds now, drop atomic weapons on Japan, that's OK (and was for the betterment of both), we'll show you how to be prosperous, peaceful, and much better neighbors in your neck of Asia. We're still working on a better relationship with Russia, but we'll get there, maybe never having a 'hot war' with Russia has lead to making the reproachment more difficult. Iraq and Afghanistan could still go poorly, or more likely, they will become better countries after the decades of chaos and misrule that preceded our intervention (and possibly as much as a decade of chaos and fumbling towards something better).

America Kicks Ass, even if Matt Yglesias still thinks our nation never should have been born . . .