Let me tell you why...despite my stellar tan, my lack of sleep and my broken Turkish and Greek, the most important thing I've brought home is respect.

Imagine standing on top of Stone Mountain, Georgia, the winds whipping through the tops of the trees.  You are standing on a piece of history, thousands of years old but fully equipped with all of the modern conveniences:  sky cars, snack bars and a picture of Civil War Generals probably only a hundred or so years old. 

Now shift gears a minute, picture yourself climbing the marble steps of the Acropolis in Athens.  These steps are worn from the tread of millions and you be matching, stride for stride, the footprints of Plato or Socrates.  Now take a step between the marble columns that mark the entrance to the great halls and the top of the Acropolis.  The wind that gently cools you also carries a scent of olives and you can look out over the ancient city where everything seems more than a thousand years old.  No snack bars, no sky cars, just you, standing on a panorama of history.

Now back to the U.S. you are ready for a little beach time, so you choose Florida.  Beautiful Florida, House of the Mouse, blue-haired women, Miami Vice and illegal aliens.  There are hundreds of beach stores where you can get a towel for 99 cents and 50 cent sunglasses.  Oh but the beaches are nice.  They have sand, sun and water.

Santorini Greece has sand, sun and water.  Beautiful black sand beaches, bright sun that bronzes your skin without burning an water so clear blue that you could see the bottom from a plane or a jagged cliff hanging over a cove.  There are barren brown hills made colorful with painted white homes and blue-domed churches.  In the distance you can see the rise of mountains through the haze, just another island away.  Another island where finding a 99 cent towel of 50 cent sunglasses is the farthest thing from your mind and its certainly out of your sight.  You are too busy staring, mouth gaping at the beauty of the world around you.

I've been to some old churches.  Large and very ornate and more often than not, the are Catholic churches.  Why shouldn't a church be beautiful, religion should be a beautiful thing.  Faith is something to be rewarded.  There are U.S. churches that are almost 300 years old.  Haggia Sophia and the Blue Mosque (Mosque of Sultanahmet) are two of the most awe inspiring structures I have ever seen and they are both older than 300 years.  You step inside the Blue Mosque and you first look up.  You can't help it, your eyes are drawn there.  The Mosque is essentially one enormous dome, four giant columns and many half-domes.  The walls are completely covered in hand-painted ceramic tiles.  Each tile has an intricate design that connects to the tiles around it and must have been created as a personal homage to God (or Allah as the case may be).

To this point I must sound as though Im anti-American, and why shouldn't I sound this way, for the past two weeks a lot of people I met were.  Have I been brainwashed from my trip to Greece and Turkey?  Have I come to disdain the things of my country?  Foreigners aren't like us, and many cases don't like us.  Why?  We've given the world Tom Cruise, Carmen Electra and Britney Spears.  We've given the world movies, music and money.  But are these contributions really worthy or just embarrassing?  And will these contributions inspire awe in another thousand years?

America is truly a melting pot.  The good news is that we have many choices.  The bad is that our melting pot often looks like cheese fondue and regardless of what you put in it, it still tastes a little like cheese.

I wondered in Greece, is a Greek Salad called a Greek salad here, or is it just called a salad?  But we have those here (of course they are better in Greece).  We have gyros here too.  And seafood.  And yogurt.  But we also have Italian food, Chinese food, Thai food and every other influence under the sun.  We should savor our variety, but we tend to take it for granted.  And we flaunt our worldliness in front of those who gave us these things.  We are cultural elitists because we know some bits of so many different cultures, but don't respect them as individuals.

I was once accused of being a Charleston Elitist.  And I will admit that I am guilty of that.  For every discussion I could easily say, there is this _____ (fill in the blank) in Charleston that is the best ________ (fill in the blank) in the world.  We don't realize it, but we do this for America.  That's why other cultures are so insulted by Americans.

As Austin Powers once said, Its freedom baby, yeahhh.  And it truly is.  We are free to believe that we have it all.  We are also free to ignore the fact that many had it before us.  So many of us do.  We just need to be careful to respect the fact that most of what we have, came from somewhere else.

Now that I'm home, I've got plans for lunch.  I think Ill have a Greek salad, start with some egg rolls and finish with a plate of spaghetti, perhaps a Turkish coffee to finish.  Only in America.