How I Learned to Love My Country Just a Little Bit More; or Why I'm Thankful for Newsweek

Whenever I have a friend or family member tell me about their international travels, their amazement at the beauty & complexity of the culture, I feel like the US is lacking a little something. And when asked about favorite foods - how many people answer w/ a country? "Anything Mexican" or something. What's the US cuisine? Do we HAVE any?

I haven't traveled internationally (yet) so I haven't had the experience of another culture outside of the US, but I sometimes feel that our nation is culturally less rich, or beautiful, or tasty.

Upon reading a special report in Newsweek about Islam in America, I found something that makes me love our crazy country just a little more. A few sentences by Keith Ellison, the Democrat from Minnesota who is Congress's first Muslim:

The U.S. is founded on the idea that we're all connected to a set of ideas, not a set of histories. For all our criticisms, the idea of America is an amazing thing - a society organized around a set of principles instead of around racial or cultural identity.

That's a beautiful thing, for all our imperfections.