Michael Lorrey wrote:
>
> Damien Broderick wrote:
> > What proportion of US citizens is in jail this year? For what conflicts
> > with which mores? How does this compare with, say, Holland, Sweden,
> > Australia, NZ?
>
> Quite. Most US citizens in jail are prisoners of the the Drug War. If you
> discount those, our non-drug prison population is in line with other
> industrialized countries. We all have our own areas of national insanity. Ours
> is a phobia of allowing people to put things in their bodies. Everyone else's
> seems to be a phobia of allowing people to defend themselves against criminals
> and oppressive governments (they are the same thing, its just a matter of
> scale)..
Exactly, no country is perfect, far from it in fact. Neither the European nor the US governments deserve our nationalism, so let's fight *them* and not eachother.
Btw, the war on drugs can be pretty bad in Europe too, don't let things like Dutch "gedoogbeleid" (sounds a bit like "apartheid" ;-) fool you. For example, you wouldn't want to be caught smoking reefer in France... On the other hand, gun control can be pretty bad in the US, the 10 rounds-only magazine law and the hype agianst "assault weapons" being prime examples.