I’ve been reading Orson Scott Card’s Shadow of the Giant, the fourth (I think) book in the Shadow series that he wrote as a sequel to the Ender’s Game series. If you’re not familiar with them, I strongly recommend Ender’s Game. You can skip Xenocide and Speaker for the Dead, if you’d like, and jump directly to Ender’s Shadow and its sequels. I find Card to be a hit-and-miss author, my personal tastes I suppose, but these books are quite good and I think everyone should read Ender’s Game.
Anyway, reading through Shadow of the Giant I came across two passages quite close together that resonated with me, all spoken by one of the main characters, Peter Wiggin:
(America) was a nation created out of nothing – nothing but a set of ideals that they never measured up to. Now and then they had great leaders, but usually nothing but political hacks, and I mean right from the start. Washington was great, but Adams was paranoid and lazy, and Jefferson was as vile a scheming politician as a nation has ever been cursed with.
…
America shaped itself with institutions so strong that it could survive corruption, stupidity, vanity, ambition, recklessness, and even insanity in its chief executive.
—
Islam has never learned how to be a religion. It’s a tyranny by its very nature. Until it learns to let the door swing both ways, and permit Muslims to decide not to be Muslims without penalty, then the world has no choice but to fight against it in order to be free.
Just thought I’d share.