That's right, this is an American Eagle, the proudest, meanest bird in the world. It could totally kick the ass of Finland's national bird, whatever that is.

Guest commentary by Earl Clement, Patriot

Americans are pretty damned proud of America.

And why shouldn’t they be?

As the great patriotic commentator P.J. O’Rourke pointed out, “We are, after all, a country full of people who came to America to get away from foreigners.” I couldn’t have said it better myself if I were drinking. Which I were, because this is America, and in America the United States Constitution guarantees Americans the right to drink our beer and fire our firearms and say whatever we want, however we want, even if we sound like idiots, or accidentally shoot our neighbor’s dog.

So I was pretty surprised when I sobered up this week and opened my copy of Newsweek magazine only to learn that America isn’t the best damned country in the world. It’s not in the top three. It’s not even in the top 10.

It’s 11th.

Eleventh, for the love of God!

At the Olympics, they don’t even put your name up on the television screen if you’re 11th. Not unless you’re that poor sap who finishes the marathon 17 hours after everybody else, and barely manages to crawl across the finish line so they can immediately rush you to the hospital in an ambulance. Then they’ll say your name, all right, but you don’t care, because you’re almost dead, and wishing you’d taken up an easier sport, like badminton or ping pong.

So is this what it’s come to? America has been reduced to being a pathetic 11th-place loser chasing the lily-white bare asses of European countries like Switzerland, Sweden and Canada?

That’s just sad.

Want to know which country was number one?

Finland.

That’s right, Finland. Finland is located…well, I don’t have any idea where it is, to tell you the truth, and I don’t care what they do there, to get right to the point, because I’m American, and Americans aren’t legally obligated to care about where other countries are or what they do in the privacy of their own borders unless we’re going to carpet-bomb them because maybe they harbor terrorists or we need them to build a factory so they can get to work making our shoes and flat-screen TVs for 10-cents an hour.

So fuck Finland.

Still, I was feeling pretty discouraged about Finland being number one and us being number one-one, and I was going to exercise my Constitutional rights and drink myself some more Bud lights and maybe pick the empties off my neighbor’s fence with my 9mm Beretta if his new dog’s not in the backyard, when I realized that Newsweek had probably made a mistake. Newspapers and magazines make mistakes all the time, which is one reason why nobody reads them anymore. That and they don’t run enough pictures of wholesome American women like Pamela Anderson and Maria Menounos. Nothing boosts subscriptions like pretty American women showing off their all-American charms.

And I’ll be damned if I wasn’t right.

Weren’t right.

Whatever.

My point is that Newsweek based their rankings on stuff like education, health care, how many people get shot to death every year, how long it takes to get out of bankruptcy, and voting.

Excuse me?

Americans don’t care about that.  What we want to know about a country is whether it’s got plenty of cheap beer and ammo, if it’s okay to exercise your free-speech rights by talking real loud even when you’re at the flea market, and how far you have to drive to get a good hamburger. I’ll bet they don’t even have hamburgers in Finland, wherever the hell it is. I’ll bet they eat roots and twigs, and wash it down with melted glacier water.

Fucking Finland.

So guess what Newsweek?

Even if America’s number 11 in your hoity-toity magazine, it’s still number one in my book.

No, strike that.

America’s better than number one, but I’m not going to tell you how much better because, to quote the great American patriot and former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, “I am not going to give you a number for it because it’s not my business to do intelligent work.”