The Original American Sin

What a great article:

We wake up in the morning, and our evil deeds begin before we have time to curse the alarm. As we slept, our refrigerators were hard at work giving Chileans skin cancer. We turn on the air conditioner, and amphibians grow extra limbs. We breathe and contribute to global warming and killer hurricanes. We put on our clothes and cover the world with sweatshops. We put on our shoes and tie children to workbenches with the laces. We poison the soil by eating breakfast. We drive to work and drown Pacific Islanders. We go to the doctor and kill cuddly, little animals. We devastate countries we have never heard of. We are Ugly Americans, crude, boorish, and brutal, as ashamed of our tastes as we are of our genocide.

How did we become so evil? According to the doctrine of Original Sin, human nature is stained with the sin of our remotest ancestors. According to the doctrine of Original American Sin, we are stained with the sins of our remote ancestors, whether or not they were actually our ancestors. The politically correct instill in us guilt and shame and then offer to cure us of them in exchange for our becoming politically correct ourselves.

We exterminated the Edenic Native Americans; the sin of slavery and segregation belongs to us alone. We are guilty of unconscious racism, forever injuring blacks without realizing it. We don’t know how, but we are starving poor people in the Third World.

But in the midst of Babylon a miracle. Some people do not have the stain! Their opinions have washed them clean. They live on land stolen from the Indians and owe no debts. They have no more intention than we do of giving the land back, but we are the problem, and they are the solution. If their ancestors held slaves, it is not their fault. They wear the same clothes we do, but their clothes cause no sweatshops. They wear the same shoes but do not exploit children. They can eat what we eat, drive as much as they’d like, spend a month in the hospital, and, lo, the soil is fertile, the ocean does not rise, and animals frolic in the sun. They can slander the police and not suffer from crime. They can enjoy peace and belittle the sacrifices necessary to obtain it. They can be against war and share in its spoils. They can condemn Corporate America while they build up their portfolios.

It gets better from there. Read the whole thing.