The three columnists I enjoy the most are Marc Steyn, Victor Davis Hanson and Ben Stein. The latter had a remarkable article published a few days back where he looks at the difference that the United States has made in his life and why:

On the cover was the beginning of a breathtakingly horrifying review of a book about the pogroms against Polish Jews after World War II, after the defeat of the Third Reich. Jews rounded up by police, by Boy Scouts, and beaten to death with iron bars. Jews thrown off trains. Jews murdered by anyone who cared to, just in case the Jews did not get the point about how welcome they were in Poland. That could well have been my life and my death.

Then, I turned the page, and there was a lengthy, if confusing, review of a book about Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys. How it brought back my youth spent listening to "409," "Be True to Your School," and the dozens of other great Beach Boys songs. That was my life. Not being bashed to death with an iron bar by a Polish policeman. Not straggling back from a concentration/death camp to be taunted, "So, Stein, you're still alive," which meant that I would not be alive for long, of course. No, my younger life was riding around in a V-8 1962 Impala that I talked my Pop into buying for me and having crushes on girls who did not like me.

Why? Because of America. Because, as Philip Roth so brilliantly puts it, I live in America the way I live in my skin.

Must read stuff, folks. His perspective is much different than so many.