Call it a wish list, perhaps.
I’d make sure every American had health care coverage.
(How? That’s beyond me.)
Have Quebec fulfill its cultural direction but still remian within Canada.
I’d settle the language issues. I am a bilingual Quebecker, and it annoys me so much when I hear anglophone Canadians comment on the “damn french” or when I hear francophones comment on “les maudits anglais”. Why can’t it be a good thing to have two languages? Why do people resist learning something new? We are in a situation where we could have an AMAZING, bilingual country, and yet all people do is bicker about the other side. It drives me nuts.
I would make all Americans less easily persuaded by biased media and politics… and more interested in real politics.
I agree with mnemosyne. Why, indeed, isn’t command of both national languages considered good? If
people are going to talk stereotypes, why talk about the positive, and combine French style with Anglo ingenuity?
Then again, why stop with two languages? I figure that it’d be an advantage for the well-educated North American to know English, French, Spanish and Chinese (probably Mandarin).
I’ll also add Esperanto to that list, but then I’m biased.
Last week I met someone who knows eight languages! Including Finnish. :eek:
I agree with mnemosyne. Why, indeed, isn’t command of both national languages considered good? If
people are going to talk stereotypes, why talk about the positive, and combine French style with Anglo ingenuity?
Then again, why stop with two languages? I figure that it’d be an advantage for the well-educated North American to know English, French, Spanish and Chinese (probably Mandarin).
I’ll also add Esperanto to that list, but then I’m biased.
Last week I met someone who knows eight languages! Including Finnish. :eek:
I’d end commercialism in the United States.
The government’s (and by extension a large-ish proportion of the population’s) attitude to refugees.
There are lots of other things that I don’t like about this country and its government at the moment, but I was never ashamed of being Australian until the Tampa incident last year made me more aware of the way we are treating boatpeople.
I’d like to see less acceptance of violence in our culture. In my opinion, we’ve gotten so used to seeing violence in our popular entertainment that it has seeped into the populace at large and is now considered acceptable.
I would also like to see a return of good manners.
a humane refugee policy for Australia
I’d end the racism that has existed in America for our entire history.
I’d quintuple the Canadian population, creating several large cities in southern Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta.
I’d add a constitutional amendment that explicitly allowed any consentual act between any number of adults, be it suicide, sodomy, or, um, some traffic in a drug that begins in ‘S’.
I’d put me in command. 
No, not really. I’d like to see a better educated population - Far too many people don’t do well in school simply because it isn’t ‘cool’ among the teenage population (of which I am still a member, just a strange one) to work. I’d like to see more people going on to do A levels and go to university.
Or perhaps, which is almost the same, people considering education and intelligence as something to be respected rather than feared/laughed at. (Not that I’m bitter or anything you understand. )
In the UK: reduce or remove our imperial hangover, the remnants of a national superiority complex that occasionally renders our politicians and public incapable of recognising Britain’s flaws and sees our European neighbours as figures of fun to be mocked.
what primaflora and tritone said re refugee policy in australia.
and after that, i’d like a few extra big cities, just to make things interesting.
Australia, eh? Wanna borrow Toronto? Winter’s coming, I could use a holiday in the sun, and I’m sure that, what with the newly-arrived extra five million people and their underfunded infrastructure, sprawl, social inequality, beggars, multitude of languages, electronics, banking, movie, media, and software industries, eternal traffic congestion, smog, and The Airport That Is Always Under Construction, things would become ‘interesting’ quite quickly.
Just be sure to park us near the beach and the aqueduct.
I’d legalize all drugs in the United States. Imagine George W. Bush saying “Dude. We should like, MAKE LOVE, not war!” Yeah, I think some drugs could improve the administration tremendously.
I, for one, would like to see our political system reformed immensely. It’s such a rotten, tottering mess right now that I retch to think of it. Get the greedy grabfest called big business and the gronking killing machine called the military-industrial complex out of bed with government for starters. Take a great number of powers away from the government - I’m not suggesting anarchy, just mild libertarianism. Legalize certain fairly harmless drugs and tax them just like legal, but more harmful drugs.
That kind of reform, pretty please, I’ll be good this year.
Despite my seeming cynicism, we’re still one of the freest countries in the world. We stand for some very noble ideas and it makes me sad to think of where we’re going at the hands of Bush and similar presidents and how we, the people, are letting it happen. I’d rather be here than pretty much every other place in the world.
I’d like to see Americans develop an attention span of more than ten minutes. If I got a second, I’d say every American should be forced to live overseas for a year, just to force them out of their America First mindset.