Politicians and pundits in the United States love to talk about our ‘national character,’ typically in rapturous tones of triumphalism.

Often that character is asserted as a noble force but not defined: Earlier this year, for example, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said our national character — presumed to be benevolent — requires us to be welcoming to legal immigrants.

Other times it must be defended against foreigners who just don’t understand us: Washington Post columnist Jim Hoagland last month explained that too many Middle Easterners fall prey to depictions of Americans routinely raping, killing, firebombing mosques and torturing innocents as a function of national character.

And sometimes character is political destiny: In New Delhi last month, President Bush proclaimed that ‘democracy is more than a form of government, it is the central promise of our national character.’ Luckily for India, its national character shares the same feature, according to Bush.

Can a nation have a coherent character? If we take the question seriously — investigating reality rather than merely asserting nobility — we see in the U.S. national character signs of pathology and decay as well as health and vigor. What if, for purposes of analysis, we treated the nation as a person? Scan the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association (the bible of mental-health professionals, now in its fourth edition) and one category jumps out: Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

DSM-IV describes the disorder as ‘a pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy’ that can be diagnosed when any five of these nine criteria are met:

1. a grandiose sense of self-importance.
2. preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love.
3. believes he or she is special and unique.
4. requires excessive admiration.
5. sense of entitlement.
6. interpersonally exploitative, taking advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends.
7. lacks empathy.
8. often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her.
9. shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes.
Narcissistic tendencies to self-aggrandize are not unique to the United States, of course. But given the predominance of U.S. power in the world, we should worry most about the consequences of such narcissism here.
axisoflogic.com

…The primary founder of the Democratic Party was Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson was not perfect, but his thought was far more democratic and libertarian than most of his contemporaries. This is especially true when you consider that his peers were the Founding Fathers, most of whom were quite comfortable with monarchy and aristocracy and openly hostile toward democracy. Jefferson was not a pure democrat in the Athenian sense and his status as a slaveowner taints his image in the eyes of modern liberals and leftists. These are valid criticisms. However, true democracy was unheard-of in the 1780s, aside from the pages of history books and its small-scale practice in Switzerland and some New England towns. When it came to slavery, Jefferson did not practice what he preached, but what he preached should not be overlooked. He condemned slavery as a great evil deserving of divine judgment, and asserted that all people are created equal and endowed with unalienable rights.
counterpunch.org

Like most of his colleagues on the religious right, Tim LaHaye, a co-author of the best-selling “Left Behind” series, insists that “those who founded this nation” were “citizens who had a personal and abiding faith in the God of the Bible.” If LaHaye means only to say that religion has played an important role in American history, he is surely correct. But if he is taken literally (as a believer in the inerrancy of the Bible should be), he is decidedly wrong. It is one of the oddities of our history that this very religious country was created by men who, for one brief but significant moment, had serious reservations about religion in general and Christianity in particular.

According to David L. Holmes’s “Faiths of the Founding Fathers,” none of the first five presidents were conventional Christians. All were influenced to one degree or another by Deism, the once-popular view that God set the world in motion and then abstained from human affairs. John Adams, a Unitarian, did not accept such Christian basics as “the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, total depravity and predestination.” Thomas Jefferson cut and pasted his own Bible. Before he became president, James Madison wrote the “Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments,” a classic text in the history of religious liberty. Our fifth president, James Monroe, gave his name to a doctrine, but it had nothing to do with faith; in fact, Monroe may have been the least religious of all our early presidents.
nytimes.com

Porter J. Goss was forced to step down yesterday as CIA director, ending a turbulent 18-month tenure marked by an exodus of some of the agency’s top talent and growing White House dissatisfaction with his leadership during a time of war.

The likely successor to Goss is Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the former director of the National Security Agency and now deputy to Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte, senior administration officials said. He could be named as soon as Monday.
washingtonpost.com

Top C.I.A. Pick Has Credentials and Skeptics
WASHINGTON, May 5 „ Gen. Michael V. Hayden, who senior administration officials said Friday was the likely choice of President Bush to head the Central Intelligence Agency, has a stellar r?sum? for a spy and has long been admired at the White House and on Capitol Hill.

But General Hayden, the principal deputy director of national intelligence, would also face serious questions about the controversy over the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance program, which he oversaw and has vigorously defended.

His Senate nomination hearing, if he is chosen to succeed Director Porter J. Goss, is likely to reignite debate over what civil libertarians say is the program’s violation of Americans’ privacy.

MANAGUA, NICARAGUA Venezuela’s populist president Hugo Chavez has been accused of using his country’s oil wealth to help elect like-minded leaders in Bolivia, Peru, Mexico, and Nicaragua. But there’s been little evidence, until now.

A cooperation agreement signed last week between Nicaragua’s Sandinista leader – and longtime US nemesis – Daniel Ortega and Mr. Chavez is being touted by many here as an initiative to sell oil to Nicaragua on credit, allowing the country to invest more in poverty-fighting projects. Critics call it a blatant attempt to buy the Nov. 5 presidential election for Mr. Ortega.

“Central America is important for Chˆvez because the rest of his influence is concentrated in the Andean countries [of South America],” says Michael Shifter, vice president for the Washington-based Inter-American Dialogue. Mr. Shifter says Chˆvez is clearly on a mission to challenge US influence in the region, but that he also appears genuinely concerned with helping the poor – two traits that don’t necessarily contradict one another. “This shows a larger ambition, and he is focusing his resources on Nicaragua and calculating that Ortega has a chance to win [elections in November].”
csmonitor.com

PUERTO IGUAZU, Argentina (AP) — South American leaders promised Thursday to respect Bolivia’s decision to nationalize its natural gas sector and agreed to negotiate future gas prices, hoping to diffuse a crisis sparked by the Andean nation’s energy industry takeover.

A day after Brazil’s state-owned petroleum company announced it was freezing investment in Bolivia because of the nationalization decree, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva suggested that Petrobras could reverse course after negotiations.

“As a company, it will always invest wherever it sees a chance to obtain a return for its investments,” Silva said after meeting with Bolivian President Evo Morales, Argentine President Nestor Kircher and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in this city along the border with Brazil.
cnn.com

The Mexican president has backed down from a decision to decriminalise the possession of small amounts of cannabis, cocaine, heroin and other drugs after objections from the US.

A day after his office said he would sign the measure into law, Vicente Fox said yesterday he was sending the bill back to congress for changes to make it “absolutely clear” that the possession of drugs would still be a criminal offence.

Earlier yesterday, the US embassy said it had “urged Mexican representatives to review the legislation” after fears it would increase drug tourism from the US to Mexico.
guardian.co.uk

ATHENS: Radical speakers addressing the Fourth European Social Forum, which opened outside Athens on Thursday, said they were ready to wage a “war for peace” to stop an attack against Iran. “The day we get the news about [an attack on] Iran, we will be out onto the streets,” British writer Tariq Ali told a news conference.

“We have to be prepared for this, and when [U.S. President George] Bush makes [threatening] noises, to say that we will make war for peace,” he added.

According to American anti-war activist Ashley Smith, a writer for the International Socialist Review, “just this last weekend in New York City, 300,000 people marched to demand an immediate withdrawal from Iraq, and to oppose a war on Iran.”

Citing sources inside Iran, Ali observed that a strike against Tehran would be folly, given the extent to which Washington depends on Iranian support to maintain forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“The support given by the Iranian government to the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq is very important to the United States,” he argued.

“An actual war against Iran would be one of the craziest things the United States has done. If they bomb Iran, let alone [conduct] a land invasion, you will have a big collapse in the occupation in Iraq and probably in Afghanistan within two weeks … you would have a new front of war from the Tigris to the Oxus Rivers,” Ali said.
dailystar.com

ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) Thanks in part to last-minute U.S. diplomacy, two years of Darfur peace talks beset by setbacks and frustration ended with a signing ceremony between the government and the largest rebel faction Friday.

Now the hard part: ensuring pledges to stop the fighting and begin rebuilding translate to an end to Darfur’s suffering. The key may be a robust U.N. peacekeeping force, which Sudan’s government has indicated it is willing to accept.

While the main Darfur rebel group signed the accord, two others rejected it, saying it did not go far enough to meet their demands for security and power-sharing guarantees and compensation for war victims. Optimism was muted by the two groups’ absence and by a history of failure to live up to agreements.
usatoday.com

PALESTINIAN leader Mahmud Abbas is ready for “immediate negotiations” with Israel and urges its new government to abstain from any unilateral action in the West Bank, a spokesman said today.

“President Abbas has expressed the readiness of the Palestinian Authority and the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organisation) to resume immediate negotiations with Ehud Olmert’s new Israeli government to implement the roadmap and establish a Palestinian state,” Nabil Abu Rudeina said.
theaustralian.news.com.au

Who’s he talking to? It’s Israel refusing to negotiate, not Hamas.