Not-scared America

I have to agree with almost all of this by Fareed Zakaria.

I especially liked this section:

The presidential campaign could have provided the opportunity for a national discussion of the new world we live in. So far, on the Republican side, it has turned into an exercise in chest-thumping. Whipping up hysteria requires magnifying the foe. The enemy is vast, global and relentless. Giuliani casually lumps together Iran and Al Qaeda. Mitt Romney goes further, banding together all the supposed bad guys. "This is about Shia and Sunni. This is about Hizbullah and Hamas and Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood," he recently declared.

But Iran is a Shiite power and actually helped the United States topple the Qaeda-backed Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Qaeda-affiliated radical Sunnis are currently slaughtering Shiites in Iraq, and Iranian-backed Shiite militias are responding by executing and displacing Iraq's Sunnis. We are repeating one of the central errors of the early cold war—putting together all our potential adversaries rather than dividing them. Mao and Stalin were both nasty. But they were nasties who disliked one another, a fact that could be exploited to the great benefit of the free world. To miss this is not strength. It's stupidity.

...largely because it makes a point (better) that I was trying to make here. (Man, linking to myself is just such a wonderfully pompous experience. I would apologize to my readers, if I had any).

Of course, his worldview validates my own worldview, so of course I like what he wrote and I am less likely to look for counter examples. But the he brings up a primary theme that is difficult to refute-America's open, democratic society is a strength, not a weakness. Given that we live in a time when, say, writers at respected, right-wing magazines can call for military coups to save our nation, this cannot be stressed enough.