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A political question (I guess)

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The point wasn't that it's not important for homosexuals to have equal rights, but that opposition to homosexuality is ridiculous and saturates public attention over something that wouldn't be any issue if gay marriage was legalized. As for abortion I support the right to personal choice but that's totally peripheral to what this topic is about.

Your slavery analogy is fallacious. Lincoln's primary agenda was to prevent a sectional conflict, not to crusade for civil rights. The Emancipation Proclamation was a political maneuver intentionally announced after a Union victory at Antietam to solidify support for the war effort and discourage foreign intervention on the side of the Confederacy. Most of the 'free' slaves couldn't just get up and walk away from their plantations. There is no equivalent motivation for the legalization of gay marriage. And while it certainly wouldn't eliminate ideological opposition from evangelicals, they can't exactly form lynch mobs to take the law into their own hands...



Equality does not entail certain people having significantly more money than others. If you are imposing lower taxes on the wealthy than they can afford to pay, you are doing so to perpetuate their ability to remain wealthy. That is not something done in the name of equality.
I have said in posts previous it was not brought up to make an analogy to the Abolition movement, but rather to point out how minority rights have been near-sacred since the Union victory. The Douglas-Lincoln debates started this.

As well, why is it equality to make the Wealthy pay more? If we are on the topic of fairness, a flat income rate is the only way for things to be completely fair. It also preserves the voters power.
 
... people think of america and americans in general ...

omg, i'm reading this, then the thread contents, and i'm seeing

"i hate america because blah blah blah government policies"

i think we should start differentiating between americans and the american government.

its a bit unfair to say to an american "i hate you because you have progressive taxation" =.= or "i hate you because your country has troops in iraq"
 
I forgot this topic was about why people hate America. I took it off topic, sorry. If nobody minds, I will continue to respond, but I would like to know more of why the OP dislikes America.
 
its a bit unfair to say to an american "i hate you because you have progressive taxation" =.= or "i hate you because your country has troops in iraq"

Yea dude, it's unfair, but from personal experience, that's what happens. As an American living in Australia, it seems that people just don't like Americans.
 
You can say what you want about the Western Suburbs, but I live on the North Shore. About as un-Western Suburbs as you can get. Fact is, they get the stereotype, but everyone seems to be the same way.
 
intelligent discussion went down the drain in this topic

as for me, I personally think America is a could-be-good country fucked up by a couple of things.

a) pretentious people who think they know better than everyone else and that what they do is right. America is really, really pretentious. "Look at us, we have a lot of money. Look at us, we can spend it on crap food. Look at us, we have really good health care. Look at us, we have really good education. Look at us, we have a really good army." No, you don't, half your population has that. The other half is currently severely struggling to make up for the stupid laws you have imposed that makes the rich richer and the poor poorer.

2) In America, everything is for sale. Integrity is for sale. Honesty is for sale. God is for sale. It all ends up being for sale. America promotes a culture of "if everyone takes care of themselves, everyone is taken care of." Unfortunately, not everyone can take care of themselves. This way, the people with the most power rule, and since the US is based on a capitalist system, the ones with the biggest wallets always win. Everything is a market of the same products everywhere. Everywhere I go in the US, everything is the same shopping malls, the same silly products, the same clothes. America makes you pretend you can choose, but you can't. Capitalism is still a system, disguised under the name of free will. There is no such thing. I absolutely hate the commercial trends of the US. Everything is about making bucks. To me, money does not equate and never will equate to happiness. I want a country with a culture, an identity, and not a consumerist country of braindead fucks who buy products in the same store everytime because the government, the companies, God, whoever tells them to.

3) Dumb foreign relations. Everyone else in the western world has to adhere to US rules, or face the repercussions. Since the US are the most military powerful nation in the world, Europe and the EU can't just say "FUCK YOU GUYS, WE'RE NOT TRADING WITH YOU ANYMORE." It doesn't work like that. If you want to be someone in this world, you have to be friends with the US to make the bucks, or they'll shoot you down with a gun. I'm not saying muslim fundamentalists got it right, they're stupid if they think violence is going to solve everything. I'm saying, I hate the society where I have to lick everyone's balls to be someone. America promotes that society. I am not for sale. I am a human being and would like to be treated as one, and not be weighed for the amount of dollars I have in my back pocket. Thanks very much.
 
I agree with all of Altmer's points - I think you put it very succinctly - that it is the culture of America that I do not like. It is slowly creeping into Britain and it is horrible.
 
tl;dr

I don't doubt the fact that other countries hate America, since in general Americans are some of the most arrogant people on the planet. Also our politicians are dumbasses, but I think that is just a minor point when you look at the complete arrogance of a large portion of Americans.

Americans, being rich, tend to think that they're better than everyone else.

Also, I don't know if there are people like this in other countries, but we have a shitload of people who believe that they know right and everyone else is wrong, criticizing everything about the government, criticizing war, criticizing capitalism, and various other less important subjects (gay marriage, abortion come to mind), but I guess that would also somewhat fall under arrogance as well.
 
Altmer, you seem to have more of a problem with capitalism than America. Anyways, I would say any socialist or communist system would give even less choice, even if just because there are no competing companies.

I will give you the arrogance point, but that's been there since Ben Franklin and co. decided we should no longer be ruled by the British and set up our relatively new system of government. We are bound to feel arrogant because we were the first modern country to be openly entirely democratic.

Even then though, good health care, education, and army all stem from money. Is it our fault we took the industrial revolution to the extreme and used it to become the world's largest economy? It seems to have work well for most of America. There still is poverty, but than again, most of the poverty can be attributed to immigrants in port/international trade cities. Exceptions would be the slums that exist in Chicago, Detroit, and the Great Lakes cities and then New York, Boston, and New England cities.

Anyways, you seem to have most of your problems with money and capitalism. That's about all you touched on. I say get used to it... Europe conquered the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Australia in the name of money. And back then, the money was for the king and who he felt like paying, not everyone else. So don't act like Europe wasn't ever money-crazed.
 
Altmer, you seem to have more of a problem with capitalism than America. Anyways, I would say any socialist or communist system would give even less choice, even if just because there are no competing companies.

I have a problem with both systems. The advantage of the latter is it (tries to) exterminate greed, but since that is an inherent human quality, it's not like that is not going to happen with communism either. My problem is with people that think they need everything they can get once they have the money to spend it on something. That is my problem. I don't think there is a real way to attach a monetary value (because it's so arbitrary) to any kind of object. But, of course, people need a way to show status and property and all that: I guess that's the way society rolls, ne? I would wholeheartedly prefer a society that doesn't know the concept of property. Oh well, not gonna happen. This is more a beef with humanity than any form of political system, I guess. The only advantage I see in socialism is that wealth and money is more evenly spread, so people who weren't born with rich parents or brains stand an equal chance of functioning in society.

I will give you the arrogance point, but that's been there since Ben Franklin and co. decided we should no longer be ruled by the British and set up our relatively new system of government. We are bound to feel arrogant because we were the first modern country to be openly entirely democratic.

Really? I would argue that's wrong, because you know what the constitution of the US was based on when Jefferson and his friends wrote it? Dutch books. He literally took ideas from that and put it into the American constitution. Democratic ideas have been around for longer than yesteryear. In fact, in Athens in olden times there were already the first rudimentary forms of democracy. The US are very quick to claim "WE DID IT", but they forget who they pinched it off.

And I would argue that no state is 100% democratic as well, if not directly then indirectly, but that is a matter for another topic.

Even then though, good health care, education, and army all stem from money. Is it our fault we took the industrial revolution to the extreme and used it to become the world's largest economy? It seems to have work well for most of America. There still is poverty, but than again, most of the poverty can be attributed to immigrants in port/international trade cities. Exceptions would be the slums that exist in Chicago, Detroit, and the Great Lakes cities and then New York, Boston, and New England cities.

Yes, but is there good health care for everyone? Is there good education for everyone? No, you can get only into the elite college if you have smacks of money to spend. There is a huge difference between private and public schools, hospitals for people who can pay the insurance and for people who can't. That is what I hate. No insurance because you're disabled and can't work properly? That's a bummer, you don't have any money so you can't get treated. It's simply not a fair system.

Anyways, you seem to have most of your problems with money and capitalism. That's about all you touched on. I say get used to it... Europe conquered the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Australia in the name of money. And back then, the money was for the king and who he felt like paying, not everyone else. So don't act like Europe wasn't ever money-crazed.

Sure, Europe is just as capitalistic as the US, and I don't like European society in that way as well. However, Europe has tried to make a mentality change when it comes to that: just look at countries like Sweden or Denmark, who have extremely well-paid for facilities, the US doesn't have that, now does it? You can always function (or have more chance of it) in Europe. There's always flaws, also where I live, that's humanity and society as it rolls, I guess.
 
I sorta dislike the setup of this question. It sure looks like a lot of people, Americans included, dislike America because it's politically fashionable. They all say the same things, and few of them have actually put any thought into the matter or considered it. The whole idea seems a bit silly tbh, seeing as people have different disagreements with different groups of people, and it all gets lumped under US hate. Having a beef with capitalism, American govnerment policy, Christianity, or whatever shouldn't be a beef with the whole country. The sterotyping of Americans as uniformly fat, stupid, and rich is another matter, and should not be aknowledged in any case.
 
I post frequently on more Euro heavy forums than this one (Darkfall online forums are full of the damn vikings) and here is what I've gathered they hate us for:
Arrogance
Ignorance
Obeisity
The fact that not all of us are ultra liberal
The fact that we pretty much have all of them checkmated to the point where no European country could even imagine placing signifigant sanctions on the United States.

Well, not all of the reasons hold true for every American, but what is portrayed by the media, theirs and ours, tends to give off this image. In reality, Europeans are as ignorant and arrogant and nearly as fat as Americans (they're catching up). People are people no matter where you go.

On the politics, Universal Healthcare can work as long as you're increasing taxes substantially, and continue to do so as inflation caused by faux money unbacked by precious metals rises to unmanageable levels causing the economy to crash. I would never want universal healthcare, because it's economically irresponsible and a moral wrong. The government is not robin hood, they should not force people to give them money so that they may redistribute the wealth to the less fortunate, that generally ends up with the government pocketing most of the cash and giving token sums to the poor. If the rich want to give to the poor via more efficient charity, of course they should be more than able to do so, but the government shouldn't function as a wealth redistribution machine. It simply does not work (See: Communism). Getting UC for 300,000,000 people is exponentially more expensive and complex than getting it for 80,000,000 or so in a European country.

Another thing I hate about universal healthcare, you DO NOT get to pick your doctors. You don't have the option of paying extra money to get a person who has been working in the field for 30 years to operate on your brain rather than a first year medical grad student. I'm sorry, but if someone's fucking around inside me I want them to 100% know what they're doing, I don't want to take a diceroll and hope I get a good doctor.

I also want to see America go back to the gold standard in order to stem inflation, if left uncontrolled it will keep going up as the federal reserve keeps loading the market with an already heavily depreciated American dollar. The gold standard limits the amount of currency in circulation assuring that we don't get the problems we currently have. You know there's a reason that old people bitch about stuff costing more than it used to, even though technically it doesn't. The value of money is simply decreasing due to the fact that nothing is limiting how much the federal reserve can print. The same thing was the most signifigant cause of the stock market crash and great depression.

Also the IRS needs to go, federal income tax was declared unconstitutional by the supreme court a dozen times before the president (I think wilson was the one to impose the tax we have today) finally managed to put enough supreme court justices with his mindset in the court and got them to let him pass it reguardless of its constitutionality. Replace it with sales taxes or more luxury taxes, but I don't enjoy the government directly stealing from every paycheck I will ever get.

I'm not even going to start going into our irresponsible foreign policy, we're trying to declare the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization now... Seriously, with over 70% of Americans wanting to pull out of Iraq what kind of numbskull does it take to try to start another war? We're funneling billions of dollars into this dumb shit weekly, we could spend half of that and just buy the fucking oil. We've been the 1,000 pound gorilla in the room in world politics for the past 50 years, no wonder that Latin Americans and Middle Easterners hate us.

If you want no holds barred socialism move to Europe. I'd prefer that my country be run by fiscally responsible individuals (hey, a man can dream can't he? Vote Ron Paul). I'd also like us to stop being assholes on the world stage, it's going to cost us another 9/11 if we think we can keep fucking around in everyone else's buisness without blowback.
 
Ok sure, maybe we are the most hated country in the world. However we are also one of the most respected. Imagine if a country like Russia declared a War on Terror as we have. They would be under alot of fire, and pressure. It's very possible they could be attacked on their own grounds. Now, as im sure you all know we currently are at war agaisnt Islamic Facists (idk about spelling sorry). There is one simple reason we will not be in as much imminant danger as russia would have been: the Monroe Doctrine. In short, it states if any other country interferes in our hemispehere, they're owned. It's as simple as that. That one document has given us tons of hate, and respect. Latin america countries feel as if we are parenting them, which they hate. Europeans power is limited to there own nations, while we can do as we please, simply because we want to. Is this wrong? Is this right? Well thats a matter of left or right. But I do know it gives us alot of hate. But then again, doing what's right isn't always easy, and doesn't always give you love.
 
America is hated by only 3 kinds of people:

American Elites. They spit on our freedom because they were born into it and feel guilty about it.

European Elites. See Above, only they spit on their freedom too and add in a healthy dose of incontinence and economic penis-envy. I speculate one of the reasons the EU exists is so that these spineless bEurocrats can claim the continent of Europe has the same GDP as the nation of America.

Dictators. Usually because when they step out of line one time too many, our military (+ the non-spineless countries, generally the UK, Poland, Australia, and such) gets called in by the Euroweenies to destroy their regime.

So far as I know, most normal people's opinion of America is nuetral or better. Any hatred is usually directed at our President, not our nation.

The proof is in the fact we've got a bare minimum of 12 million people who "hated" America so much they entered our country illegally just to live and work here.

I'm not even going to start on that harbinger of socialism, universal healthcare. All you need to know is that the government is "taking care of it" at massive expense to you, you don't choose who your doctor is, and as far as they're concerned you're just name #563,847 on a waiting list. Universal health care is the socialist version of charity, where everyone gets to suffer equally under government largesse.

Oh, and as far as you "tax the wealthy" folks. Just make sure the government doesn't deem you as "the wealthy." My parents are both small business owners, but we only live by average means. The government still classifies them as "the wealthy" though. Yeah, they've got business loans and mortgages to take care of, but some dope thinks they should be taxed more in the name of "equality" and "to help the poor."

You want to help the poor? Volunteer at a f*cking soup kitchen. The idea of "helping the poor" by taxing "the wealthy" means you want to make the government take money from others in order to give a no-strings handout that will usually be squandered anyway. Some people live on Welfare as a lifestyle these days. Why don't you just go up to the poor hobo you so desperately want to help and tell him: "I'm here to help you! I'm going to petition the government to make other people pay more money into the welfare system! The welfare office is on 3rd and Broadway, btw. Have a nice day, aren't you glad I'm so charitable?"
 
Really? I would argue that's wrong, because you know what the constitution of the US was based on when Jefferson and his friends wrote it? Dutch books. He literally took ideas from that and put it into the American constitution. Democratic ideas have been around for longer than yesteryear. In fact, in Athens in olden times there were already the first rudimentary forms of democracy. The US are very quick to claim "WE DID IT", but they forget who they pinched it off.

Are you kidding me? I don't think I've EVER seen anyone that knows anything ever say that America was the first to have a democracy. Maybe they were the most successful, but that's an entirely different topic. Anyway, on topic, I personally believe that some people don't like America because they don't live there. I'm sure this doesn't apply to everyone but I'm sure if some of you who are like "YEH FUCK AMERICA IM AWESOME CUZ IM FROM A DIFFERENT CUNTRY THATZ SO MUHC BETTER AMIRITE" would be singing a different tune if you had lived in America all your life.
 
Democratic thought was around ages and ages before the United States of America were formed. That is simple fact. Altmer is right, Dutch books were largely the inspiration for the Constitution.

America was the first to put into place a successful democracy after a loooong time, which generally drew hate from European arisocratic governments for a long time to come, because they saw the prospering of America as a threat to their aristocracy.
 
European Elites. See Above, only they spit on their freedom too and add in a healthy dose of incontinence and economic penis-envy. I speculate one of the reasons the EU exists is so that these spineless bEurocrats can claim the continent of Europe has the same GDP as the nation of America.
This is reading to much into it. The European Union idea has been toyed around with for ages now. It seems that every time a man brings Europe to its knees, something of the sort happens. Napolean, WWI, and Hitler all were the ones that brought EU though up again and again.

And the EU is actually very similar to the US. Each country contained the in the Union acts somewhat like a state, though full economic cooperation isn't likely as EU members are so obsessed with their sovereignty that they wouldn't ever join anything akin to an American Federation.
 
Democratic thought was around ages and ages before the United States of America were formed. That is simple fact. Altmer is right, Dutch books were largely the inspiration for the Constitution.

Did you read what I said? I agreed that democracy was around way before America formed. Read my post again, please.
 
The E.U. is how the U.S. should work on a government level, the member states should be the ones deciding most of the laws within the state while the federal government just coordinates military action and ensures that the constitution and bill of rights are upheld by the law in every state. The federal government is far too bloated and it needs to be cut back down to size. Not that i'm espousing the rampant socialism throughout the EU, but they do have a far more efficient system than the one the US is using at the moment.
 
Democratic thought was around ages and ages before the United States of America were formed. That is simple fact. Altmer is right, Dutch books were largely the inspiration for the Constitution.

America was the first to put into place a successful democracy after a loooong time, which generally drew hate from European arisocratic governments for a long time to come, because they saw the prospering of America as a threat to their aristocracy.


To both of you, I simply said America was the first modern country to openly implement democracy. I know all of the ideas were created during the Age of Enlightenment in Europe. America was just the first country to use them as a form of government.

Otherwise, I agree with most of what you said. Money really is the root of all evil. But there's no going back now, it's simply more efficient than a barter economy, as seen in the WiFi forums. Also, public schools can be good, it just depends on where you live. The better parts of cities have better schools, it's just that teachers prefer to work with students who want to learn. Eh, of course, I also go to the largest high school in America.... So money is exactly a problem because they put so much into it.
 
Kietharr said:
On the politics, Universal Healthcare can work as long as you're increasing taxes substantially, and continue to do so as inflation caused by faux money unbacked by precious metals rises to unmanageable levels causing the economy to crash.
This is such a horrible leap of faith. Care to explain your logic at all? How Y follows X in this instance? I sure as hell am not seeing it.
I also want to see America go back to the gold standard in order to stem inflation, if left uncontrolled it will keep going up as the federal reserve keeps loading the market with an already heavily depreciated American dollar. The gold standard limits the amount of currency in circulation assuring that we don't get the problems we currently have. You know there's a reason that old people bitch about stuff costing more than it used to, even though technically it doesn't. The value of money is simply decreasing due to the fact that nothing is limiting how much the federal reserve can print. The same thing was the most signifigant cause of the stock market crash and great depression.
The gold standard was abandoned far later than the Great Depression (not truly until 1975). You'll note that many countries abandoned the gold standard during the Great Depression as a method of recovery. Yeah, the gold standard did a great job limiting the amount of currency too. The value of currency to gold was only changed how many times in the time between the Great Depression and 1972? Three? Five?

Of course, you never explain why this inflation is actually a problem anyway.
 
Ok sure, maybe we are the most hated country in the world. However we are also one of the most respected. Imagine if a country like Russia declared a War on Terror as we have. They would be under alot of fire, and pressure. It's very possible they could be attacked on their own grounds. Now, as im sure you all know we currently are at war agaisnt Islamic Facists (idk about spelling sorry). There is one simple reason we will not be in as much imminant danger as russia would have been: the Monroe Doctrine. In short, it states if any other country interferes in our hemispehere, they're owned. It's as simple as that. That one document has given us tons of hate, and respect. Latin america countries feel as if we are parenting them, which they hate. Europeans power is limited to there own nations, while we can do as we please, simply because we want to. Is this wrong? Is this right? Well thats a matter of left or right. But I do know it gives us alot of hate. But then again, doing what's right isn't always easy, and doesn't always give you love.

You have an odd sense of the word respect. I don't think many people respect the USA at all. Respect is earned. What has the US done in the past little while to gain respect? Countries are following along for their own political reason. The US has a lot of power and the government thinks it's above world law. You can't fuck around with them. After the USSR was split up, the US has been the only true world power.

Seriously. No respect there. Fear is a better word.
 
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