I think it's strange and frightening how little it takes to be accused of Anti-Americanism or hating America nowadays.

Time was you had to do more than say you disagree with the President or his policies. You had to be a communist, or at least an alleged communist. You had to, say, wish America ill or something along those lines. No longer.

That's problematic, to say the least. Because we don't live in Napoleon's France. L'etat, she is not Bush. Historians have suggested that we have been heading toward an imperial presidency for some time, and that is not good news. It's bad not because the current president is George W. Bush, but because it goes against the very principles of our form of government, as I understand them

Much of the energy poured into the creation of the US was put toward preventing tyranny by putting checks on political power. The specific bicameral nature of our federal legislature was designed to balance the power of populous and less populous states. Judicial review checks the power of the legislature. etc. etc.

Why does it seem like people are so fond of pooling political power in the hands of a single executive? Why do people stand behind the president as the primary manifestation of the state?

I have ideas about this. They are mostly opinions, and not too well informed. Anyways... People like to be led. Most of the people I have known, including myself, are not, as it were, totally self-propelled. That's one of the features of government in general- that it organizes people to a cause or purpose. People like to identify with power, because it makes them feel powerful. They don't necessarily want to share in that power directly, but they want to be associated with it. American politics is a spectator sport. Every two years we sort of have a say in it, but the rest of the time we cheer our side. And we tend to cheer the star player most of all.

I don't think it's really a cult-of-personality thing. Because our current President owes most of his popularity to party affiliation, air of inevitability, and the fact that a bunch of Islamist terrorists blew themselves up along with 3,000 Americans. He's personally engaging, I gather from Alexandra Pelosi's documentary, but otherwise he's a dud. He's a very poor speaker- although he benefits greatly from the soft bigotry of our low expectations- and terrible at communicating ideas, especially complex or uncomfortable ones.

The perception of Bush as the defender an imperiled United States is what makes our president, in many ways, a sacred cow. If I were cynical, and sometimes I am, I would say that it behooves Bush to imperil the United States, because there is no more powerful a figure than a US president who is a sacred cow.

The way things are is not the way they should be. My attitudes toward our chief executive should not constitute Anti-Americanism. They should constitute a distrust of unchecked power used unwisely. And this distrust is as American as apple pie.