We came to an open place where there was abundance in every direction.

We harnessed it and made it work for us, and we changed the world.

Through our example, the rights and potential of man has move forward more dramatically in two centuries than in the two THOUSAND centuries before.

And for all this great change, for all this hope and promise, our ultimate contribution?

The Big Mac. 

Juggalos and Tila Tequila. 

Late-night television advertising, leather bars, and fighting for peace. 

Octomom and OJ. 

Proposition 8 and neo-Nazis who want to "protect our borders." 

Entitled rich white people who clamor for 'representation' when their interests are the only ones that have ever BEEN represented. 

Trailer parks. 

Global warming that we pretend isn't happening, and when we're forced to admit that it's happening we pretend it doesn't matter as long as we can maintain the belief that it's not our fault.

An egalitarian society more strictly regulated by caste than most of the third world. 

The "world's richest nation" in which fifteen percent of our people have no health care and a million children sleep on the streets every night. 

A third of those are prostitutes. 

Let me say that again so you understand it: 

Three hundred thousand human beings between the ages of 11 and 17 years in this country fuck for money so they can survive...and there are some of you reading this whose first reaction to this knowledge is 'well, that's their choice.'

Young people born into privilege have no appreciation for their luck in this country; they have been taught that it is their right to have a cell phone, air conditioning, and gas in their tank. I've known plenty of people who think being poor means they can only eat out once a week.

We assert our "right" to destroy the planet without regard for the 6.7 thousand-million ("billion" in the US; "milliard" in most of the rest of the world.  See:  http://tinyurl.com/bilmil) people who live here, and without concern for those who will come after us.

We spend more in the US on shoes, jewelry, and watches - a billion dollars a year more - than we spend on higher education.

We spend $14 billion per year on ocean cruises.  We could provide fresh water to the entire world for $10 billion.

Of the $24 trillion spent worldwide on household goods and services in 2005, the US - which has roughly 5% of the world's population - spent $11 billion of that.

And we have people without health care, millions who are homeless, and children having sex for money...

...and Glenn Mother Fucking Beck wants to tell me that wanting to put people in homes, get them educated, and get them health care is wrong?

Bill O'Goddamned Reilly wants me to believe that the only right way to get those kids off their backs is to throw Bibles at them?  Michael Shithead Savage wants us to think these kids are all out smoking dope and having a great time?  Meg"Y"n Kelly, the one-woman rollback of the gender revolution, wants us to be outraged because cops in New Jersey have to make sure the people they arrest know why they're being arrested.

I'd like to see Glenn Beck take it up the ass from a guy three times his size for enough money to get a couple of double cheeseburgers and a nickle bag of shitty smack to make the horrid reality of who he is go away long enough to survive earning another night's meal and another night's escape from the filthy horror of his life.

I want Meg"Y"n Kelly to spend a couple of years with the disease-ridden shafts of filthy old men being shoved down her throat at five bucks a pop and see how fucking worried she is about cops speaking English.

Nah, I don't want that.  Because I'm not like those assholes - I wouldn't wish that kind of thing on anyone.  I really wouldn't.  Hell, I don't even like talking that way. 

But the horrible part isn't my language.  The horrible part is knowing that this is the reality of life for a third of a million kids in this country every day.  Don't be pissed off at me, folks.  I'm just the messenger. 

Don't be pissed off at me.  Just think about those kids the next time you strut and preen at your big shiny truck and your 72-inch television.  Think about those kids the next time you wave your damn flag in my face and tell me that it stands for freedom and equality of opportunity.

Think about me kicking your miserable ass if you dare try to counter this reality with some sorry-assed relativist argument about how much worse kids in OTHER countries have it.  Maybe "well at least we're not as bad as the third world" is how they define American superiority in the Tea Party.

At my party, that's how we define mediocrity.

If we're going to be "the greatest country on earth," it's high time we got off our asses and started doing it, instead of just talking about it.