Obama and East Berlin

The more I hear Obama, the worse he sounds.

Take this for instance: His "gut instinct that so many of us have, that America is the greatest country on Earth."

What gut instinct? America IS the greatest country on earth and instinct has nothing to do with it.

What other country in the history of the world rebuilt every nation they ever defeated in war?

What other nation in history airlifted food to a former enemy to keep them from starving (the Berlin airlift, for example)?

What other nation in history sent its youth to fight for other nations when they were under siege, although we "had no dog in the fight?" (Sending our pilots to fly to defend England, for example, before we got into WWII.)

What other nation struggles to right the wrongs that it perpetrated on its own citizens in earlier years?

In the 1982 I was lucky enough to get to go to East Berlin. That was before the wall came down and it was quite an adventure to ride through Checkpoint Charlie with a busload of American tourists. What we found on the other side came as quite a shock -- from being removed from the buses and lined up in the Soviet parking lot with machine guns trained on us by East German guards while the bus was being searched. The search when we entered East Berlin was impressive, but nothing compared to the search when we returned. There was, too, the shock of being required to give up our passports to the guards while we toured the city.

East Berlin was tragic: The condition of the buildings, homes and even the people on the East side of the wall was shabby, to say the least. The contrast between the bustle of commerce and just plain old living in the West and the quiet repression of the East made a deep impression on all of us.

Until I saw for myself, I had no real appreciation of what it means to live in a free society. It is obvious to me from so many things Obama has said, that he has NO idea -- and very little appreciation -- of what we have and who we are in America.

If he has to rely on "gut instinct" to believe that America is the best in spite of all our failures and mistakes, he has no business being President.