From: Kevin Freels (megaquark@hotmail.com)
Date: Thu Aug 21 2003 - 00:58:16 MDT
Isn't it odd that everyone loves to complain about the "evil" U.S, but when
something bad happens they always come to US for help?
----- Original Message -----
From: "matus" <matus@matus1976.com>
To: <extropians@extropy.org>
Sent: Wednesday, August 20, 2003 10:34 PM
Subject: RE: Land of let's only talk about whats wrong with the US
> 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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