I wish also to point out that my criticism is not towards American values as much as the fact the the US generally does not practice them while she preaches them to the rest of the world and often acts under the cover of these values in a manner that actually contradicts them. I never mentioned democracy, a confused term that has been much abused in recent American foreign policy. The concept of the universal application of US style democracy was put forth as a war slogan for the two world wars - making the world safe for domcracy. The propaganda was so suscessful that it has become imbedded in the American general consciouness. Large number of people acting under that concept have been killed, bombed, suppressed and put in jail by US authorities in the name of democracy.
Political democracy is inseparable from economic democracy and social democracy.
In a larger sense, democracy is essentially a philosophy which promotes the right and capacity of a people to control their institutions for their own purposes. Thus democracy in its extreme form leads to anarchism and is incompatible with law, order and security for the individual in society. Athenian democracy works only in small city states and in a closed uni-cultural context, without diversity in race, religion, ethnicity, cultural conditioning, etc. Even then Plato rejected it in favor of the philospher king. Democracy historically has fallen repeatedly before the imperial idea, both in secular and ecclesiastical politics.