The Hard Truth

The hard truth is this:

Americans are arrogant, lazy, and self-indulgent because they've had it too good for too long.
If the Chinese were to give each one of their citizens a car and a full tank of gas and tell them to go out into the world, we'd all be speaking Mandarin by sundown.
Africa is not some mythical birthplace of humanity, nor is it a cultural garden of Eden; Africa is a very violent place where many rivers carry more blood than water.
No country south of the Rio Grande has ever had a government that was spared from a violent revolution about every other generation or so.
Arabs are violent and intolerant.
Europeans may have some great historical sites, but the entire continent was responsible for the worst human rights abuses of the twentieth century - hands down! - all the way up until the millenium ball dropped.
Russians do not place a high value on human life.
Every human being in the world carries the arrogant assumption that their opinion means something.

and the last hard truth:

The only thing that redeems us is our ideals: Our ideals that we can actually make the world better.

VG