I don't think one can ever be too grumpy, but I sense that I am getting exceedingly close to that asymptotic limit. I look over my writing here and find a fair amount of griping, which troubles me. Leftists are destroying the country, Norm Mineta makes travel miserable, men don't act enough like men, rant, rant, rant. Many of you dig the grumpiness, I know, because especially smackilicious (my new word) rants garner a good deal of extra email.

Well-aimed barbs are delicious to the educated, but let's face it, incessant grousing is a bit annoying. So, in order to make up for the fact that I've complained about them quite a bit lately, I've developed a list of things I love about my fellow Americans:

1. We are a nation of rabble-rousing entrepreneurs. Many of us are descended from people who picked up their rifles when taxes got too high. Many more of us have ancestors who came to America because it was a land free from oppressive government, a place where the individual can rise to greatness by dint of hard work and a good idea, the "Golden Mountain," as my Chinese friends call it. We've invented near everything worth having (e.g., planes and automobiles), or made it better and cheaper (e.g., food), and we've invented darn near everything not worth having as well (e.g., television, rap music, and stretch-pants).

2. We don't like bureaucracy. Bureaucracy is like the Mercedes, an overhyped expensive German product that at its best looks very impressive, but never quite lives up to the promises of its creators. Americans hate bureaucracy. Look around the next time you go through airport security. Watch how people bristle. They look at their watches, roll their eyes, stamp their feet, and seek out people with whom to commiserate. Sometimes the mood can almost be vocalized, as if everyone is thinking the same thing: "let's stuff all these pinheads in the x-ray machines and take care of security ourselves." If you are in a large airport, you may notice a clump of people who are not bristling. These are foreigners. Pity them.

3. We are disliked in the United Nations. This is obviously a good thing: the U.N. is an organization of twits who think that the solution to the world's problems is a diverse, multi-layered, unelected bureaucracy with the work ethic of Spanish customs clerks and the mentality of Gestapo security forces. To quote Dan Quayle, we wear their scorn like a badge of honor.

4. We fought a war to end slavery. Save all your carping, you merchants of racial grievance -- no other slave-trading country, with the exception of sister England, ever devoted the same thought, blood, or treasure to resolving this issue of right and conscience, because for nearly all the others it never was a matter of conscience.

5. We are heavily armed. We have more killing power per capita than any nation in history. That, my friends, is just plain cool, especially because we are not a warmongering totalitarian state, but instead a democratic republic. However:

6. When push comes to shove, we lay down the ever-loving slap. Just ask the Kaiser. Or the Nazis. Or the Imperial Japanese. Or the al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. Oh, that's right, you can't ask them, because we ground them into powder -- biffed them, as the Brits used to say -- leaving their pathetic remnants to scurry back to the demon pits where they were spawned. If we ever decide to change our national motto from the Latin slogan that so beautifully tripped up Al Gore, I propose we adopt the following: "You want a piece of this?"

7. We don't like tattle-tales. Other countries have managed to turn their citizens into informants, but by and large we have resisted that tendency. Sure, we have our share of brown-nosers, but they usually receive a good dose of torment in school before taking a job with the IRS, ATF, or DEA. The snitch is a perpetual loser when portrayed in most of our movies, "narcs" are regularly taunted in high schools, and we jumped all over Linda Tripp's case for recording her friend's confession, even though it implicated a U.S. president in perjury and sexual harassment. Think about one of our favorite phrases: "mind your own business." It's the perfect marriage of anti-snoop sentiment and entrepreneurial fervor. Keep your nose out of my affairs, and get back to making money. That is so very American, don't you think?

8. We contract with our government. You have to love a country that started out by giving its government agents a list of things they're not allowed to do. Of course, we ceded authority over that document to a series of unprincipled, power-hungry politicians, who in turn put unprincipled, utopian-minded jurists on the bench who proceeded, working hand in hand with unelected bureaucrats, to distort and undermine the original limitations on the federal government. Still, the Constitution was a nice start. If only we could get back around to using it again.

9. Lots of us actually like God. Sure, the French have their cathedrals, and the Italians have the Pope. But you can drive for hundreds of miles in the Old World without ever seeing a big, tacky, well-lit cross stuck on some roadside hill. We have churches of all shapes and sizes that people of all shapes and sizes actually attend, outreach concerts where people go to get saved, revivals where -- if they are Baptists -- they can go to get re-saved, tent meetings, Bible studies, prison fellowships, Christian athlete fellowships, Christian businessman fellowships, Christian music (most of it bad, but they mean well), Christian books (ditto), and great big Christian mega-stores where you can satisfy all your Christian paraphernalia needs with the assistance of a faith-affirming ecumenical staff. Most of it is a gaudy, overemotional, sentimental mess, and about half of it consists of really bad theology, but the bottom line is that this is God's country, warts and all. We love Him, and He loves us back (in spite of us).

10. We like happy endings. I know, it makes for movies and books that are often less artistic and true to life, but really, would you rather be trapped on a deserted island with somebody who likes "You've Got Mail," or someone whose favorite director is Ingmar Bergman? We may be sappy, and optimistic, and totally insulated from the oppressiveness of existence or whatever, but nobody likes to hang out with the gloom and doom Nietzsche crowd anyway. If you question that analysis, think about it this way: who gets more opportunities to reproduce -- business majors, or philosophy majors? I think you get my point.

So there you have it, ten reasons I love my fellow Americans. What do you love about them?