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How do you kill a dream? Captain America has been to this country like ham is to cheese, like Laverne is to Shirley, like... well, you get the point. Although Steve Rogers may have been cut down, the super soldier serum can always be replicated. Consider all the losers in the past that have appropriated it in one way or another. The only thing that they lacked was the thing that made Captain America great, both in the WWII days and in the sixties to today, and that is the idea of selfless sacrifice in the name of something wholesome to believe in like justice and respect for everything the constitution of the United States portrays. Like the right to vote, the right to a pursuit of happiness, the right to become whatever you put your mind to according to how bad you want it(all in the scope of the law, of course).

Comic books have become more politically correct, but also a bit morally corrupt, just as the rest of our society. The comics code has always had a reign on the content, but comic portrayals of violence in the early nineties brought about the whole Wolverine/Punisher versus Captain America way of dealing with crime (at least with Marvel). Whereas the Punisher would kill as a way of dealing with his need for vengeance against the scum who killed his family (how very Batman...), Cap knew that justice was not something to handed out by costumed vigilantes, but by due process of law. He was a war veteran, and respected life to the extent that he was always straight-laced to the point of almost being a dork. But that is because he was more than a man,... he was an ideal. He was an icon to be proud of. He was the proponent of Martin Luther King's dream of equality and respect for all others, and the American dream of righteousness in all actions.
What did Cap think of us in Iraq? I'll tell you. He no doubt felt the same way most of the heartland of America feels, that the American soldier feels, that the common man feels. That we should support our troops, but not blindly support a government that may be in the wrong. That we should fight for stand in the appropriate measures, through lobbying and public debate. He certainly had his own go against the government in the past. Look at the whole US Agent episode so long ago. Or when everyone wanted him to run as president...
He was the appropriation of a dream that we can all become better people, even after being our worse, and a perfect euphemism of what America represents as a country today. He is the embodiment of that dream, and that is a dream that will never die.

Learn more about this author, Matt Elmore.
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