I was thinking about what to write for July 4th, something about war or history or patriotism - something with lots of links and throwing around words like rebellion and revolution and terrorism. Something that explained how American history is so different in America than it is in other countries, if that makes any sense.

I've read a lot of American history, a lot of war history (a lot of it while in college); a lot about how no one is ever really good or bad at that moment on the battlefield; how mostly it is all sad and tragic and royally fucked up. And then I read about that helicopter rescue in Iraq and I felt like singing that damn Lee Greenwood song just because the image of those guys going in and picking up two of their own on the ground under fire and how good and brave they were to do that and how amazing that pilot was to fly out of there with two guys hanging on his helicopter, well that imagined picture in my head blew me away.

And then I realized that the picture would still be great if they were British or Polish or Kenyan or Russian. That I wanted those sailors to live on the Kursk because the thought of them hanging on for so long and never making it out was just heartbreaking. And I wanted those Pakistani soldiers not to die in Somalia because it wasn't right that they should - they were reaching out to the people there; they were struggling to make a connection and dying shouldn't have been part of it; dying shouldn't happen to the Blue Helmets who are there to make peace.

It's not American bravery I admire, not really, it is bravery itself. And I thought wouldn't it be grand if we could change all the histories and not wrap ourselves up in flags of glory saluting our historical heroes under the blanket of nationalism, but just celebrate their innate human bravery. Must you call Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Patrick Henry and all the Founding Fathers Americans? Were they fighting for the country of America - a country that did not exist as real but was only an ideal, a hope, a few words on paper when they launched a revolution? Is that ideal different from what so many Irish died for after the Easter Rebellion? Does it matter that their ideal was tied to a place called Ireland and ours was tied to a place called America?

Is geography the most important part of courage?

Did Nelson Mandela struggle harder for South Africa or Martin Luther King Jr. struggle more for America? Or were both of them fighting the same fight - Ghandi's fight - on different soil? Is it so important to claim only our national heroes or can I claim others as well? Must you be an American to earn my admiration? Is that the way I am supposed to learn about bravery?

Are only American heroes the ones worth honoring?

If we knew what burned in the hearts of most Iraqis and Afghanis and Saudis and Bosnians and Serbians and Sudanese and Congolese and on and on and on and on, would we find the same thing that burns within us as well?

Do so many of us fight for the same thing - the same hope and dream and secret wish - that ends up in rhetoric tied to the ground we were born on and thus becomes wrapped up in a flag others can not admire?

In other words, is it all just about freedom and is your country merely an afterthought, an offshot, a corollary to that more important goal?

Maybe the bravest thing I could do tomorrow would be to say "God Bless the World" and not worry so very much about America. Because if the world is free, then I think America will be just fine - the America that I want to be part of anyway.

I'll let one of the best American writers ever explain what I mean:

Democracy will not come
Today, this year
Nor ever
Through compromise and fear.

I live here, too.
I want freedom
Just as you.

- Langston Hughes

Happy Fourth of July everybody...........