Jesus clayton, get off the man. Maybe his post wasn’t politically correct, there’s no reason to call the Spanish Inquistion on him.
Oh, great, now I’m going to get yelled at for bringing up Spaniards.
and BTW, I found the comment about the hyphen quite amusing.
…and we invented Spanish Fly!
Coldfire, I’m willing to water my statement down a bit. How about, “more fair than some others”? I can live with that. And yes, I was talking about jailing conditions. 
Oh, and I forgot to mention that I’m grateful that as a woman I was born in the US. No ritual genital mutilation for women (only men.)
Oh man, I REALLY don’t want to get involved in this, but I have to point this out…
Where do you get “If L then P” and the other assertions? I don’t see a logical link between “People of non-Christian majority beliefs live in the U.S.” and “People in the U.S. may travel to accommodate their religious needs.” Sure, Muslims may make the pilgrimage to Mecca, and Catholics to Lourdes and other sites, but I still don’t see any real syllogism constructed from your statements. Among other things, you definitely can’t assert “If T then H” here; both those statements may be true, but there’s no causal relationship there.
I’m not arguing with (or supporting) your conclusions; I’m just bothered by arguments that look logical but don’t hold water.
Back to the “I Love America” thread.
ALL pop music! Baseball! Mint juleps! Air conditioning! Girls in Capri pants! (OK, capri pants may not be of American origin, but I sure do like 'em.)
I used to be up there with the best of the USA-bashers. Then I went to New York. Now, I’m just busy trying to figure out some way I can get back to that amazing city.
Nuff said.
NYC is definitely a great city. For those who say bad things about America, look at the cultural diversity of NYC. In my average day I see more people from more different nations than anyone else on this board (other than fellow NYers).
I’m not saying that America is the perfect nation, but it certainly must have something going for it considering that people from all over the world come here to call it home.
Thank you oxymoron, Coldfire and a couple others.
No wonder the world thinks we’re idiots. Someone asks what’s great about our country, and the teaming masses answer “hot dogs” and “jazz”. Good grief.
What about exceptional religious toleration? What about creating the first viable modern democracy? What about developing technology that enabled people to reach the moon? Overcoming the powers of darkness in Nazi Europe? Deciding that the best way to avoid war was to give money away according to the Marshall Plan? The vision of countless Americans to produce a better society, to better humankind according to the United Nations?
No wonder America-bashers are able to make such headway…
Ummm - back to the OP:
partly_warmer, there’s no need to be downhearted. I read this as a fairly ‘light’ thread, and didn’t mean to trivialise American achievements (although I don’t think religious tolerance is unique to the US, and overcoming the Nazis was a joint effort to say the least!).
Well, how about we add to the list “Americans can grow up in such amazing, unprecedented security that they can care passionately about things like pop music and sports”?
Give us a break; yes, we have the best race-relations on the planet, and certainly the greatest explosion of technological advancement in history, and an unprecedented protection of human rights, but isn’t all this done in an attempt to give us the leisure to appreciate things like sports and music?
I consider this a positive sign that we are, in the grand scheme of things, doing great!
[psycho patriot]U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.![/psycho patriot]
Yes. Americans are able to understand that many things are proposed with an element of jest, and are able go with that element and have fun playing with that partial theme. It’s a really great thing about America(as well as most other countries) that most people don’t go looking for the slightest oportunity to create condesension and dischord in a place(perhaps we could even call it a forum) of entertainment, rather than vitriol.
What I like about the US, in one post or less:
[ul]
[li]I can expect to be able to get the straight story on major news events even if the Corporate News Network is peddling lies. I know about the DMCA, the straight story and not the hogwash, because of a small semi-indie news outfit called Slashdot. The Washington Post published the Pentagon Papers during the reign of Nixon I knowing that not even that tinhorn dictator could overrule the Constitution and America’s above-average judicial system. They won because America generally likes free speech.[/li][li]A Constitution that is neither an expedience nor a joke. If something is in the Constitution, or implied by the Constitution, or can be logically inferred from the Constitution, it will hold up in court and it will be defended by the system. I can quote the First Amendment and it will carry the weight of Lex Suprema in any court in the land. I can refer to the Fifth Amendment and be allowed to keep quiet in any court in the land. Truly, the power of our Constitution is Awesome and Mighty.[/li][li]Civilian police. Here, it is common and not even thought of. In Somalia, it is a thing devoutly to be wished! Seperating the police from the military provides a sanity check on the powers of the Federal Government: I shall be governed by the local powers I have the most direct control over, and they shall deal with my misdeeds. The Feds don’t see me, so they can’t hurt me.[/li][li]Ability to defend myself. In Great Britain, I couldn’t own a handgun, so I would have to rely on their overburdened and outgunned police system to protect my own life. Here, I can and do own handguns, so I can entrust my most precious commodity to my own hands.[/li][li]Strong economy. Even on our worst days (and this is by no means our worst day), we still eat Africa’s lunch. Europe is barely keeping parity with our dollar, and Japan’s yen is to have a Yen worth a fraction of what the American currency is.[/li][li]Libertarian-leaning government. With some exceptions, our government takes a hands-off policy towards us. FDR was an exception, but we swung back towards small government since then. Our most Authoritarian parties don’t match the politics of Europe, where government is a much greater player in the economy. For a reason why that is a good thing, see above.[/li][li]Non-religious government. In America, the words “under God” in the pledge are under cogent, credible attack (with a sound Constitutional basis, I might add). In Europe, the ‘Christian Democrats’ are running things and Catholicism is taught in schools in southern Germany (or so I have been told). Americans in general have the sense to keep religion in the private sector, where it belongs.[/li][/ul]
Have I offended enough America-bashers yet?
NYC is to me
The epitomy
Of the word
“City”.
Missed something:
[ul]
[li]A stable society. America swings Libertarian/Authoritarian, Individualist/Collectivist just like every other living nation. But America doesn’t lurch from extreme to extreme through massive internal turmoil, and we have had one civil war in our history. We swing from alignment to alignment slowly, maintaining our internal cohesion and generally ending up on the Libertarian/Individualist side of things. The America of today isn’t a fragile balance of warring clans, and it isn’t a single clan out to destroy all internal opposition. It is a generally unified nation that enjoys its unity and fights its battles using the established system.[/li][/ul]
Do you honestly believe this? Because I don’t. True, it’s a hard thing to quantify, but I’d say that while the US is definitely a country which strives for equal opportunities across all races, it certainly hasn’t reached it yet. And I can think of other nations that seem to have fewer problems in this regard.
Can somebody explain to me why a lot of Americans have this weird obsession with currency denominations?
Let me try to put it simply: the fact that one American dollar is worth more than one Japanese Yen doesn’t say anything about either economy’s strength. It says something about the value of the denomination, and in some cases, it can indicate past hyperinflation (not in this case, though).
“Europe” (I’m assuming you mean the Euro) is not “barely keeping parity” with the dollar. As a matter of fact, the Euro has seen a significant appreciation against the dollar over the last few months. Of course, it has seen a significant depreciation in its early stages as well, so it all evens out in the long run - so far. But it seems that you think something along the lines of this: “the Euro is worth 97 Dollar cents, which is less than one Dollar, and therefore our economy is stronger”. This is not very good reasoning. It should be: “the Euro has appreciated somewhat against the Dollar as of late, indicating that the Eurozone economies are in better shape than the US economy”.
The denomination is irrelevant. The direction of movement between exchange rates is what indicates relative economic strength. OK, off the soapbox. Pet peeves of an economist.
I’m going to end up in the Pit or GD if I carry on refuting things, but:
Bull crap. Spend some time in London or Amsterdam and then get back to me. Or Malaysia (post '69!), Hong Kong, or Singapore.
As I once had both time and inclination to say to someone who hurled an epithet at me while I had the temerity to be walking around in my ROTC uniform:
“You do realize, don’t you, that you’re living in one of the few countries in the world where you can say something like that to someone wearing a military uniform, and you won’t wake up tomorrow in jail, if you even woke up tomorrow morning? Who do you think you have to thank for that? Your teachers? Your fellow freshman anarchists? The newspapers? Three strikes, binky. You have to thank everyone who’s worn this uniform before, and on their behalf, instead of calling my CO and ordering you to be disappeared, I’ll just say this:
Go. Fuck. Yourself.
And that is all I can do. You’re fucking welcome.”
Yea for peaceful transfer of power every 8 years! No matter how many hanging or dimpled chads there are!
C’mon clayfeet_e let’s take it outside. Maybe you thought you were in Great Debates.
This is why I went off on Eunoia. After I mentioned (not too harshly btw) that her description of Americans is not a quality specific to Americans, Eunoia not only stands by her statement but makes a specific racist remark (hardly a simply pollitically incorrect statement btw).
Had I been in her situation I would have simply said, yes, it’s not specific, yes it’s sad it happened, but let’s thank those people who came together and stopped the terrorists. But then again, I’m not Eunoia, so she can go around replying to a serious bit of constructive critisizism from someone else rather than me with a remark bashing where they put their hyphen. And yes, I don’t know how to spell a few words, critisizism is one, go ahead, do your worst.
And I did the math thing fast, so sue me.