From: matus (matus@matus1976.com)
Date: Wed Aug 20 2003 - 21:34:14 MDT
Max M wrote:
>
> But what many of you americans seem to not understand is that we
> non-americans most often *really* like USA despite it's many
> faults. But
> that will not stop us from mentioning the faults.
I do realize that, but what you who mention only faults don't realize is
that you are indistinguishable from the chomskyite
everything-the-US-has-done-is-absolutely-evil kind of person. When you
hear nothing but criticisms, what evidence do we have to suggest that
you have anything to say other than criticisms?
Regardless, and just to clear this up, I think many of the complaints
waged against the US govt are valid. I would most accurately be
considered a minarchist libertarian, so I obviously oppose liberal
paternalism and socialism, and conservative lack of respect for
individual freedoms. Additionally, I oppose the war on drugs and
incarceration perpetrators of victimless crimes. The occurrence and
presence of these things really bothers me, but so do the atrocities
that occur in other countries, which are often far far worse.
As far as free countries go, I consider most of the post-industrialized
west close enough to not really be worth troubling myself over the
differences while other egregious differences are present in the
industrial and pre-industrial countries of the world. If I could live
anywhere I wanted, Id probably first pick Hong Kong (but would end up
moving soon as the Chinese took control again) second would be a close
runner up between the US and Australia.
> That being said, I too found Damiens posting a bit
> "insensitive" in the
> light of the recent developments on the list.
I didn't find it 'insensitive' per se, just wanted to put perspective on
it relative to other world atrocities. I found it very interesting that
the article was judging the incarceration rates of populations of the
world. Interesting, I thought, I wonder how they got accurate data from
notoriously closed and oppressive societies? If they were saying the US
has the highest incarceration rate in the world, surely they actually
looked at the rest of the world.
Upon further investigation, that was obviously not the case. As noted,
Iraq, Afghanistan, Burma, East Timor, North Korea etc. for a total of 17
countries had NO data present to compare. Yet the CS Monitor did not
find this noteworthy enough to even mention in their article. It should
have read "US has highest incarceration rate of the countries who would
tell us theirs, the notoriously worse countries incarceration rates are
unknown"
Michael Dickey
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