Memorial Day Weekend Competition: Define “America”

On a weekend when thoughts turn to family, fallen comrades, and the future of the auto industry, Schott’s Vocab is soliciting definitions of America.

John Updike wrote, “America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy.”

Woodrow Wilson called America, “the only idealistic nation in the world.”

Israel Zangwill said, “America is God’s crucible, the great Melting-Pot where all the races of Europe are melting and reforming.”

Barack Obama observed, “America is an unlikely place – a country built on defiance of the odds; on a belief in the impossible.”

And, Hunter S. Thompson suggested, “America … just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.”

Co-vocabularists are invited to submit their own definitions of America, the pithier the better, by appending a comment to this post.

http://schott.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/22/memorial-day-weekend-competition-define-america/

Some very interesting definitions posted.
I like what Churchill said: America - "A country that will do the right thing, after it has tried everything else!"

than it would have been 40 years ago when I still had hope.