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Yikes. We're fighting World War IV over here. I'd like to see if I can at least offer an olive branch here. We're all here (that is, we're all FReepers), because we believe in certain ideals, certain ways in which a Free People ought to live. Different peoples might express them slightly differenly as influenced by their history, language, and culture, but the ideals are pretty much the same and we're all here because we've decided to take a stand and affirm that we belive in them:

We hold these truths to be self-evident:

That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security...

This is but one way that they have been and can be expressed, as descended from English society. I'm not here to toot the English horn (as I'm not of English descent), but to make the point that when it comes to these ideals and our stance on them, ethnicity and nationality doesn't matter a d*mn. Ethnically I'm half Greek, a quarter Bulgarian, and a quarter Romanian (in other words, your average mutt). I only thank the Lord above that my mother had the good sense to come to a land where the majority hold these ideals in high esteem, such that I could be botn in freedom in the great Commonwealth of Virginia.

If i wanted to gripe about my ethnicity I suppose I could...I idenitify with my Greek side and we have had our a**es kicked by just about everyone over the millennia. It would also be pointless, destructive, and hurtful to the real reason why I am here. We are all here because ideals like these aren't just words or propaganda to us. We have that terrific insanity where, in a world whose history is marred more by tyranny than anything else, we truly belive in these things, and we are willing to sacrifice blood and treasure to not only defend them, but spread them to the darkest corner of the world. As to the topic of this thread, I don't want to see Russia destroyed -- I'd rather see translations of the Declaration of Independence, the Federalist Papers, the Magna Carta, etc. be sent to as many people as possible there. We are here because of the ideals we hold sacred, and we shouldn't forget that.