"Why I Love America" by Alberto Gonzales
9th Grade Government Class

Actually, this piece is a "commentary" on CNN.com, but it in fact reads like a cheesy middle school - maybe high school - paper on how anyone in America can grow up poor and climb to a position of real power, inflicting death, terror, and torture, or something like that.

Here's a classic line: "My hopes, and those of many others with stories similar to mine, are reflected in those words of the founders of this nation more than two centuries ago: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.'"

Wasn't that the line from Lisa Simpson's report for that Reader's Digest competition back in the 2nd or 3rd season of that show. If I'm not mistaken she greatly improved it later by scrapping the sappy naivete and rewriting it as "Cesspool on the Potomac."

Here is the point of Gonzales' American Dream piece: He is "the son of a Mexican cotton picker and a construction worker who never finished grade school, and [he] served as the Attorney General of the United States." This proves that the American Dream is still alive as long as we continue to embrace the values of "sacrifice, hard work, personal initiative, dedication to family, and perseverance in the face of adversity" or to rephrase "family, hard work, and sacrifice." Oh and Hispanics share these values (except the one's he had executed of course, they were mentally retarded).

Bravo Alberto. You've done good. God Bless. Now sit back down and let's hear from one of your classmates.