My father, who had some oddly streetwise ways of dispensing comfort, would sometimes look at me when I'd done something particularly bad, back when I was, say 9 years old.

"I'm not gonna punish you for that," he'd say, examining the new jacket I'd ripped while chasing the dog through the woods. "I know it had to be an accident because no one would do anything that stupid on purpose."

Yeah. Pop was a benefit of the doubt kind of guy.

And that's really wherein we find the greatness of American society. That's what those pesky, flyblown foreigners will never understand.

Our superiority is not in our intentions but rather in our lack of any intention.

When some, Quran'ed-up jihadi beheads an American journalist, we KNOW he's doing it on purpose. He said so.

But here in America, when a 9-year-old girl accidentally turns her shooting instructor's brains into bloody salsa, that's not so bad, because it was an accident. She'll tell you so, as will all her family and several million members of the National Rifle Association. Hold a candlelight vigil and then shut it down. No problem.

When a bunch of whacked out fanatics crash planes into American skyscrapers, we know they meant to do it because they told us so. That's an act of terrorism. They hate us because of our freedom.

But when we kill maybe 150,000 Iraqi civilians because we had some "bad intelligence" and a dim-witted president, that's an accident and we're not to blame. Sing "God Bless The USA" and then shut it down. No problem.

If Muhammad and the rest of the turban brigade plant a crudely made mine on a road in Afghanistan and blow up a truck full of American soldiers, killing a couple of them, that's a cowardly act of homicide. They did just what they said they'd do if we started wandering around their country, breaking things.

But, when an American cop turns some black teenager into a lead mine and it turns out the kid didn't have a gun, that's an accident. He's not SUPPOSED to kill the kid. Read his union contract. A few nights of rioting, no federal charges against the cop and shut it down. No problem.

If millions of American get addicted to cocaine, we go down to Colombia and we raise hell. We do this because those evil bastards in South and Central America are selling drugs on purpose. They grow the stuff, refine it, smuggle it and sell it.

Our consumption of the stuff is, on the other hand, accidental. We're predisposed to addiction. We're poor. It makes music sound better. It's an accident. Fund another rehab center and then shut it down. No problem.

In America, where the list of freedoms is long, we have long since devalued many of the old classics, including freedom from want and freedom from fear.

Freedom from responsibility, we still got and the new national motto is, "oops."

To find out more about Marc Dion and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com. Dion's book of Pulitzer Prize-nominated columns, "Between Wealth and Welfare: A Liberal Curmudgeon in America" is available for Kindle and Nook.