First things first: Calling me an idiot makes you look weak, uninformed, and incapable of rational discussion. Saying I am socially backward is a matter of your opinion and does nothing to bolster your argument. For anyone engaged in this type of posting, get over your need to be morally or intellectually superior to someone who disagrees.
I try to be honest and forceful in my opinions but never personally insulting to someone else and I do fail on occasion I admit. If you cannot enter a discussion where you can divorce your own person from your opinions (e.g. assaulting progressive policies is the same as insulting progressives.) then it isn't worth discussing because you start from a position of defensiveness to an attack that never happened.
Here is my main clarification:
My assertion that America is the best does not make your country suck. It does not make your country a "socialist hellhole", and it does not mean its citizens are unhappy. I can disagree vehemently with the policies of a given country and point out its flaws without that being an indictment of the people that live there. Please note the difference between arguing that Europe's fiscal policies are insolvent and thereby not indicative of progress vs. arguing that Americans are ignorant. One attacks a policy, the other attacks people who live there.
I don't know how I can make it clearer that my love of my own country is not a denigration of yours, wherever it is. The entire world is bankrupt right now, including the European nations who have basically been bailing out the next domino whose entitlements have outstripped their ability to pay for it. Public corruption exists in every nation whether their citizens acknowledge it or not. Moreover America has a fairly loose immigration policy. The "nation of immigrants" speech j7r gave is simply proof that you can in fact choose your nation. "Native Americans" however are second generation immigrants or later in my thought process. The idea I'm not a "Native American" when I was born here, my parents were born here, and their parents were born here is a politically correct assininity. What I'm not is an aboriginal. Just like basically every single person in the world, yet I doubt French people or English people or German people don't consider themselves "natives" to a land their family has lived in for centuries.
j7r: You hate the south, I get it. You hate how every once in a while one random community in the south says or does something idiotic which is then aired on the national news (and generally ridiculed because it's a dumb decision). You then blithely ignore all of the good things about the south and pretend the north of the nation is some hotbed of equality and progress. You ever noticed j7r that more people of noticable minority live in the south? No? Well, maybe you should look it up then. I don't care if race is a "senstitive issue." It's only "sensitive" because progressives like you say it is. Real people argue with facts, not ignore them because to accept them would be offensive to some people. The truth as captured in statistical snapshots by definition cannot be offensive to an objective observer. You can either do something about the realities surrounding the truth or call the truth racist/sexist/whatever and ignore what goes into it, and demonize anyone who speaks it.
@Myzozoa: Why do you accept the notion Americans are ignorant? Your entire passage is worthless if you assert you don't know what you're talking about, which according to your own logic may very well be true, why should I have even bothered to read your post? Americans are no more ignorant or racist than anyone of any other nation. France, England, and Canada can call me when they've had black presidents, black secretaries of defense, and black secretaries of state. The line America is racist is blatant hogwash. There may be racists here, but there are racists everywhere on earth. Before there were neonazis there were Nazis, and by the by Europe's defense of the Jews in WWII was pretty lackluster. The first slavers were Africans inflicting it on their own people ffs. If people stopped focusing on whose opinion to ignore because they or their nation are bigoted/racist etc we'd probably make some actual progress.
The primary reasons for the perception of American ignorance are, as the thread confirms, exactly as I stated earlier. People belive americans are ignorant because they don't align with the values of every other industrialized nation. Funny, since they probably said the exact same thing when Americans didn't allign with the values of every divine right empire. It's not even remotely ironic that everything old is new again, and the same nations who now say americans are ignorant because America doesn't have socialized medicine and gay marriage said then that americans were ignorant because America wasn't a divine right monarchy. Americans don't have an excessive need for global validation, and never have. Our nation and the European nations are going bankrupt for the exact same reason: Entitlement promises our governments made that no nation of any size could ever possibly afford. The thing driving all of out nations into bankruptcy is allignment with that highest values of other industrialized nations: socialized medicine and expansive social safety nets. They simply aren't sustainable. All they do is rob grandchildren of the benefits that the adults of today will get.
@masterful:
The 9/11 health responders bill was delayed because a budget hadn't been passed by Democrats with massive majorities in both houses at the time, so the 41 Republicans in the Senate demanded the government do one of its actual constitutional duties of funding itself. The fact the tax policy expiration dates (those weren't "cuts", they were America's tax policy for the past decade) were also impending and would represent the largest tax hike in history to all classes of Americans was simply one reason the bill was held up. To this day a 2010 fiscal year budget hasn't been passed despite the efforts of Republicans, who are correct in pushing for spending cuts. Instead they've been doing this contuning resolution nonsense. Hopefully this was the last one. If Democrats wanted a dream spending budget they had plenty of time before their huge congressional majorities were wiped out in November. Everything subsequent in your post makes no sense because you talk about a spending bill and how it provides "free" services. If the services were free they wouldn't need a spending bill for them. Furthmore the assumption that the government must spend money of every person who suffered a terrible tragedy is an errant one. The government should do only those things it must. It is not supposed to be a piggy bank or a charity.
You also work off the same economic nonsense as j7r that whenever the government takes in less money it is a gift to someone (usually some nebulous "rich"). j7r is worse in that he blatantly ignores what the Bush tax cuts did for the middle class. I actually know people who own small businesses. Both of my parents owned one and so does my aunt. We really can't afford to solace ourselves that "the rich" are some faraway class of faceless robber barons to demagogue. We are "the rich" despite the fact we have debts greater than our net worth. But every time my parents get a break on their business taxes, progressives always whine about the rich getting a gift. And they never explain to me why the government has the first claim on that money anyway. Government didn't produce that wealth, therefore theirs is the last claim, not the first.
CaptKirby said:
There were people on both sides of the argument, except in your mind apparently.
Sorry for bringing balance to a thread with an OP that was sort of half-assed and the ensuing one-line troll posts by of all people an a forum moderator. That isn't "both sides" to me, so I brought the other side.
CaptKirby said:
Also no matter how many times you repeat your coincidence sound byte, it will never become clever, I promise you.
So are you saying that all statistics are coincidences, or only those that don't fit your narrative? Statistics are not infallible to be sure, but they are a starting point for a discussion. You cannot simply ignore every gathered statistic you don't like "because correlation isn't causation." If statistics are always useless then why do we care so much about, say, WHO health care rankings?
If you want conversation, you can start by engaging issues on an honest level, like how America is not the greatest country in the world, but is not a bad place to live either. I do assume your overt fawning was simple trolling though, not serious...it just goes hand in hand with what I am talking about with discussion.
But you see, my argument is that America is the greatest country in the world, and that it is an exceptional place to live. That is what I honestly believe, but in doing so I have apparently violated your rules of honest engagement. Speaking of dishonest engagement, your line of argument that I overload my posts with "bigoted, specious, irreverently anti-intelligent typical republican diversionary screeds" is an indication you never had anything of value to say. I play by a different set of rules than you do, and in my rulebook part of honest engagement is not assuming the worst in someone and not letting your pre-concieved notion filter out your willingness to learn something. It's why I get along so well with Morm for example, and a bunch of other people on Smogon with vastly different politics from my own. I consider that part of being a good American, by the way.
See, I don't have a problem with people saying America isn't the best nation in the world, I'd just like them to provide an example of a better one in it's stead and advance what's great about that country. Knocking something down is the easy, cheap thing to do. Having pride in your country is not irrational. I'd much rather hear about how Britain has for example wonderful educational institutions than a constant whining hum of "America's education system sucks. America's education system is doomed. America is backwards. The south is why people hate America." People are actors in free nations are they not? Then their nation is in some small part shaped by their efforts, and the collective effort of a nation's people shapes that nation's policy.