I suppose I should be pleased by the ubiquity of the red, white and blue banner. Flags fly from pizza shops, porches, car antennae.Those whose knowledge comes from the idiot box will believe America to be the sum of Friends and Madeleine Albright and the preppies of the Family Bush, and they will hate us – understandably. But there is an untelevised America, a land of Iowa poets and rural volunteer fire departments and villages of faith and neighbourliness and the continuity of generations. This is the America I love, one that the keyboard bombardiers of DC would destroy in a New York minute.Patriots – by which I mean Americans who love their untelevised country – despise war, not least for its catastrophic domestic consequences In time of war, power flows to the centre. Regional culture withers, idiosyncrasies are smothered, young men are sent across the globe to serve as armed employees of the central government. People shift their loyalties from the local and immediate to the abstract and remote; already, local charities are reporting huge shortfalls as generous souls send their donations to the bureaucracies of New York and Washington.

Through it all, the belligerent eggheads of the militaristic right and world-reforming left piss their pants with glee.I defer to no one in my desire that the homicides who orchestrated the evil acts of 11 September be given their measure of justice, thrice over But I will not watch silently as my country disappears. Empire is not worth a single American (or Afghan) life; defending Israel is not worth sacrificing what remains of our traditional liberties; overthrowing the Taliban is not worth bleaching the colour out of regional America.The time for dissenters to keep quiet out of respect for the dead is over. Simple patriotism demands that we take up the plaint of a peaceable statesman from the Vietnam era: Come home, America. Come home now, while there is still a recognisable America.Bill Kauffman’s books include ‘America First! Its History, Culture and Politics’. I tried to start a rumour the other day It was a great rumour Like all the best, it had an aura of credibility about it

I tried to start a rumour the other day It was a great rumour Like all the best, it had an aura of credibility about it. But I haven’t heard it since, so I suppose that my career in rumour-mongering is a flop. The idea was that Osama bin Laden had somehow (I hadn’t quite worked that bit out) adulterated the world’s cocaine supply with anthrax.

You can see the perfection – a white powder that City people sniff mixed with a white powder that kills them. And it might – if widely believed – have the beneficial knock-on effect of glassy-eyed cokeheads stopping their habit of handing over their cash to Colombian murderers.
But starting a rumour isn’t as easy as you might think. The problem was that although the idea was great, I hadn’t a clue how to get the gossip going. I wasn’t about to join the internet chat-room crowd of weirdos. And there was the worry that I might be giving ideas to cranks So a flaw arose in my plan. I didn’t tell anyone, which rather destroys the point .Drugs have been on my mind recently On my mind, but not in it, unfortunately I had hoped that I’d be too stoned to write this piece. By now, I’d anticipated that I’d be taking daily doses of cannabis and perhaps couldn’t be bothered to get out of bed But it hasn’t worked out like that.

My supplier, the National Health Service, hasn’t delivered yet So I’m still stone-cold sober, I’m afraid. Even though I bump into things like a drunkard.For I had hoped that I’d be a willing statistic in that trial of cannabis for multiple sclerosis sufferers. My neurologist, Giles, was going to put me forward for it but the health authority has stymied that route by the brilliant manoeuvre of suspending Giles from the NHS. He had the temerity to question its wisdom in allocating only one consultant neurologist for our region, which meant that his waiting list was 14 months long.