| Is America Still the Finest Land Upon This Earth?
Posted: 1/4/2005 12:58:56 AM | Think about it...
WAR, DOMESTIC POVERTY, MASSIVE HATRED ABROAD, TERRIBLE CRIME AT HOME, PRISONS OVERLOADED, INSANE DRUG LAWS, THREE STRIKES LAW, FAULTY VOTING SYSTEMS, CORRUPTION ON ALL LEVELS, HUGE POVERTY GAP, CRIPPLING DEBT, IMPENETRABLE SYSTEMIC RACISM...
IS IT FINALLY IMPLODING OR WILL A BETTER FUTURE EMERGE OUT OF TODAY'S CHAOS?
WHAT DO YOU THINK? | |
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yna6
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Joined: 5/2/2004
Msg: 5 | |
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ousu
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Joined: 8/28/2004
Msg: 7 | |
| Is America Still the Finest Land Upon This Earth?
Posted: 1/4/2005 10:08:27 AM | Sorry, msquared and yna ;) I think - according the statistics LMAO - Finland was voted the best one to live in;) (This was not even a joke even though I am laughing.) As far as I know Canada and Finland are pretty similar.
Seriously, I think it depends on perspective... One's own country is the best one: it is familiar, we know how to survive there, etc. Specially when you stay away for some time you start to appriciate Home and your roots.
Answer is: the US is supposingly the finest land upon this earth - for Americans. (Hopefully they appriaciate it that much they will travel only in small groups - not in troops of 150 000 - and then return back to their own country (without leaving military bases all over the world). | |
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| Is America Still the Finest Land Upon This Earth?
Posted: 1/4/2005 10:15:39 AM | | just look at that stupid smirk on thier presidents face, that should answer this one.he's got that "I can do what I want, My Daddy owns this country" look about him. lol | |
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DMT
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Joined: 12/3/2004
Msg: 9 | |
| Is America Still the Finest Land Upon This Earth?
Posted: 1/4/2005 11:02:56 AM | The land that the US bases itself on is still quite fine, not as good at it was covered in Buffalo and teepees but still beautiful in places and rich in some resources. Most of the people are fine too, despite all of the rubbish they are fed (in terms of fatty, salty sweet food full of toxins; and shallow, sickly, backward media controlled by huge corporations etc). The problem of the US is an ideogical one.
People have been tricked to beleive that freedom is about being free to **** over anyone wo has less access to resources than you, whether at home or abroad. Expressive indivisualism has been sneakily replaces with economic individualism. These are entirely different things. Expressive individualism encourages creativity, openess and freedom while economic individualism creates a system when the majority of peole become the almost-blind slaves of tiny elites. When ordinary people argue that the US system is about freedom and individualism, they are essentially self-harming. They may as well be sitting their sticking rusty blades in their bodies for all the good this sort of nazi individualism is doing them | |
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| Is America Still the Finest Land Upon This Earth?
Posted: 1/4/2005 12:14:37 PM |
A socialist mind at work. Just keep your ideology out of my pocket and I won't have to bring my 150,000 buddies to keep your socialist a*** in check, or in the case of Canada 150 buddies.
DMT is from Great Britain, which is one of the closest allies to the US, and is helping your army in Iraq. You have just shown that you would be perfectly willing to attack Britain because of one person's comments.
Yet you wonder why people take issue with your posts. | |
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| Is America Still the Finest Land Upon This Earth?
Posted: 1/4/2005 12:22:04 PM | why yes it is.
war... we may be invovled with war but it is not here.
poverty... that is a human condition not limited to the US by any means
hatred abroad... sure there is some, but are those that hate us right or better?
crime... again a human condition, i feel safe... move away from the city, plenty of room here in south dakota
prisons overloaded... our prisoners enjoy a better life than numerous people in the world, other than that i dont have much to say on this one
corruption... again its back to the human greed thing, far from a US monopoly
poverty gap... it takes money to make money, BS... i grew up dirt poor and it takes sweat and a little brains to make a good living i'm proof at only 26 (rich is another story)
debt... we should just collect what is owed and stop giving aid?
racism... its only been a few decades, give it some time it will heal... besides my personal opinion is a LOT of people make it bigger than it is and that perpetuates it enormously
if US is such a horrible monster of a place why are people not fleeing instead of crawling through fences, arranged marriages for green cards, etc? politically we may suck the big one... on a personal level it is a great place to be!
btw.. i assumed "America" was referring to the US and not the whole of north america or south america for that matter? | |
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| Is America Still the Finest Land Upon This Earth?
Posted: 1/4/2005 12:25:01 PM | Varus is, in my humble opinion, not merely on here to make posts but specific posts.
Anybody check this guy's profile? Wouldn't somebody on a site like this, who can write as well as he can, when he wants to, want say women to be able to make out his features?
There is far more to Varus than meets the eye, people! | |
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| Is America Still the Finest Land Upon This Earth?
Posted: 1/4/2005 12:46:24 PM | America? What country is that? I live in the United STATES of America, there should be a definite distinction between the US and all other North and South American countries. An American is anyone living on these lands stolen from the natives. By the way, no I think this country needs a revolution, its overdue, and the people have accepted shetty government and poor leaders for too long. We need not a third but a fourth fifth, sixth,etc. party to overcome the corruption and "smoke and mirrors" approach of the closely allied Democraps and Nazicans. Sincerely | |
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ousu
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Joined: 8/28/2004
Msg: 14 | |
| Is America Still the Finest Land Upon This Earth?
Posted: 1/4/2005 12:47:41 PM | Boredcountryboy, just some comments to your post:
- You are right the situation is worse in many other countries but I think the question is more about the fact the US could make it better with all those sources it has... better for its own people generally.
- Prisons in the US are for reason criticized: instead of trying to help people to get intergrated back into the society later, the total isolation seems to be more common pattern. Losing one's dignity just creates more problems.
- The wars... yes, not on the US's soil. The next time the battle could be organized there, just for change. And an open invitation to everybody who wants to participate.
- But totally bad it cannot be as a place - nice people, mostly, at least, though the goverment is an oddity. | |
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| Is America Still the Finest Land Upon This Earth?
Posted: 1/4/2005 1:02:01 PM | i dont disagree at all Ousa... there are enormous improvements that could be made in a LOT of areas. just playing a little devils advocate and a little standing up for what i believe.... if i had the power, a lot of things would change but with such a complex system that involves basically the whole world i doubt my changes would be best. lol
any nation can only be as good as the people it represents... sadly the US has a good slice of the greedy and selfish. | |
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| Is America Still the Finest Land Upon This Earth?
Posted: 1/4/2005 1:28:50 PM | I am narrowing the scope of my question, and I thank all of you who've responded so far.
Is the United States of America (there is only one America in that sense) still the finest land on this Earth?
Is it still the land of the free and the home of the brave? Does it really encourage it's least advantaged to live out happy, safe lives free of want, hunger, and sickness? Or are they expected to work all their lives without medical insurance, employment insurance, or safe work environments? How many really escape the cycle of poverty?
Ask a southern African American what systemic racism, or cultural slavery, means to them.
Let's think about this crucial question in an intelligent manner, keeping in mind that a good answer might reveal all that we need the USA to correct about itself before it takes a hand in guiding the free world. | |
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| Is America Still the Finest Land Upon This Earth?
Posted: 1/4/2005 1:34:12 PM | I disagree with the way the question is phrased.
There is much to like about America and its people. Many many Americans (people of the United States, that is) are generous open-hearted people. Some parts of the U.S., and I'll mention only the one's I've seen personally, are very beautiful too - the coast of Northern Maine, the Outer Banks of the Carolinas, the Blue Mountains and many more places.
The political system needs work. Can anyone become President as the American myth would have us believe?- perhaps the answer is no. You need huge pots of money just to begin to make a run for it and you need to be extremely connected inside one of the two main parties.
I don't believe that ANY country should have the title - "finest land upon this earth". To suggest that one country should have this title is to foster the kind of thinking that leads to problems, including the possibility of aggression, IMHO. | |
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| Is America Still the Finest Land Upon This Earth?
Posted: 1/4/2005 1:38:36 PM | vancouverite - you seem to be slanting the question in the direction in which you want the responses to go...very leading devil:
i am by no means a supporter of the current Bush administration. nor do i agree with the systemic racism not only found in the south but all over - case in point - a recent survey showed that a majority of americans would support limiting the civil rights (including racial profiling) of Arab Americans in the name of homeland security. we saw it with japanese internment camps and turning away boat loads of jewish refugees in WWII (Canada did the same i might add), the systematic decimation of the aboriginal peoples in what is now us territory...this is not just a matter of african americans although that certainly exists and NOT just in the south. i've been there many times and can attest to the racial profiling in the blue states (i haven't ventured to the red): | |
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| Is America Still the Finest Land Upon This Earth?
Posted: 1/4/2005 2:19:45 PM | FBI report for 2002
Law enforcement officials made about 13.7 million arrests in 2002, for a rate of about 4,783 arrests per 100,000 U.S. inhabitants.
The 11.9 million crimes reported to the FBI by city, county and state law enforcement agencies represented an increase of less than 1 percent when compared with 2001 figures. The number of crimes was 4.9 percent lower than in 1998 and 16 percent below 1993.
The 1.4 million violent crimes in 2002 represented a drop of just under 1 percent. Murders, however, rose by about 1 percent to 16,204. That number still is about a third lower than in 1993
About 71 percent of murders involved a firearm. Cutting instruments such as knives accounted for 13 percent, hands and feet 7.1 percent and blunt objects 5 percent.
There were about 95,100 forcible rapes in 2002, an increase of 4.7 percent.
The 2.2 million burglaries reported in 2002 represented a 1.7 percent increase over 2001, with losses estimated at $3.3 billion last year. Only about 13 percent of burglaries resulted in arrests, the lowest of the seven major crimes measured by the FBI.
The FBI estimates that a property crime occurs every 3 seconds in the United States and a violent crime every 22 seconds.
America's prison population topped 2 million inmates for the first time in history on June 30, 2002 according to a new report from the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS).
The 50 states, the District of Columbia and the federal government held 1,355,748 prisoners (two-thirds of the total incarcerated population), and local municipal and county jails held 665,475 inmates.
The 'War on Crime' switched to the 'War on Drugs.' The incarceration rate of African-Americans and Hispanics is disproportionate to their ratio in the general population although more Caucasians use drugs than the minorities. One in three African-Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 at the present rate of incarceration will have experienced imprisonment in his lifetime. One in six Hispanics is estimated to go to prison while one in twenty-three Caucasians will have a similar experience.
Director of the Project on Criminal Justice Timothy Lynch comments that the number of incarcerated people. Lynch writes that it took more than 200 years for America to hold its first 1 million prisoners, yet managed to incarcerate a second million in only the past 10 years. This leads him to warn of a "prison industrial complex."
Is the United States a safe place to live? Is it a model to the world? | |
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| Is America Still the Finest Land Upon This Earth?
Posted: 1/4/2005 2:38:29 PM | "As for why I'm on this site maybe we can just attribute that to fate, or divine intervention if you will. "
Sure, that works for me, roughly the same as George Bush being in Iraq on a like mission!
You're no hillbilly, Varus. Hillbillies are neighbourly. They don't call their neighbours leeches. Maybe they drink the odd beer, but hey they know how to party... | |
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| Is America Still the Finest Land Upon This Earth?
Posted: 1/4/2005 2:52:40 PM | i dont disagree with the whole racism thing... we see it very often up here in the north too, despite relatively few african americans (and i dont like that term either, but thats another topic) what ever race it sucks. i've tried to discuss this topic here and it just gets out of hand by a few... i'll stay out of it now.
does the country encourage the poor to live happy and safe. yes. like i said before i grew up in a family that was dirt poor even with out a home for a short spell. my dad never gave up and always "managed" and instilled that in me and now with a little effort i've got relatively little to worry about and neither does he anymore. whether the US encouraged this or not i cant say but it sure never stopped me.
and from my limited understanding the US is not even supposed to guarentee a person a lot of what your question asks... just allow the pursuit of such things. we are after all governed by the people... i dislike the current government as much as most but thats why i voted the way i did, all the blame cant be dumped on the gov't alone... after all we put them there. | |
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| Is America Still the Finest Land Upon This Earth?
Posted: 1/4/2005 2:56:30 PM | honestly, i'd still rather live here than anywhere else. you can throw statistics at me all day long but i'd still rather live here. Canada's crime rate increased 6% in 2003 (couldn't find 2004 but i only looked for about 10 seconds). ours incresed less than 1% right? crime is everywhere, poverty is everywhere, it's a problem for humanity, not just a single country. yes we're in debt but if we were to collect from the ocuntries that owe us money their economy would collapse and vise versa. i don't agree with our gov't administration right now but i wouldn't move to any other country. okay, maybe to Sidney Australia for a few years because i hear it's beautiful and an amazing city but i'm happy here in the US. as for the question, is the US the finest land? i dunno, i haven't visited every country in the world so my opinion isn't valid.
Is the United States a safe place to live? Is it a model to the world?
please name 1 country that is considered "safe". every country has crime. yes there are safer countries but you can't say there is a safe country out there. maybe antartica because you could go you're entire life without seeing another person. but hey, there's always the risk of being attacked by penguins  | |
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lml4s
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Joined: 12/31/2004
Msg: 24 | |
| Is America Still the Finest Land Upon This Earth?
Posted: 1/4/2005 3:10:07 PM | The US started like any colony except the independence thing happened a bit differently than usual. The US has always been made of human beings, so all the normal stupidity, hatred and evil that men do can be found here. There is one special quality that sets the US apart, I think. The ideals set forth at the beginning installed an enduring bias towards doing what is right. The happy accident, that was perhaps unintentional, came in answering the question of Church vs. State. The premise was established that the only way for any religion to exist was for them all to be allowed. This meant ideas were equal.
The significance of the premise is that it balances perfectly the forces of conservatism and progress, so that what must happen can only be aimed beyond the ideas of the people involved to a future that compares well with both past and present. For any individual or group, most of what happens will seem wrong. Any position will have abundant evidence at its disposal, because things happen across the entire spectrum. No one group or agenda can gain control. Balance is evident in the closeness of elections. Polarization mitigates extremism. The whole crowd moves ahead. This is the mechanism.
The result is the eventual evolution of a global system of government for all of humanity. And like this first experiment is now, in one country, it won't allow any one nationality or culture to gain dominance, not even the US. The original ideals of equality and human rights may have been abstract and largely rhetorical when they were coined years ago for emotional effect. However because they have remained intact and current, they provide an enduring bias. Progress has been away from slavery, towards equality, away from bigotry, towards acceptance. Results come despite the government we elect, and are instead the expression of the will of the people, from what each does on a daily basis. This country provides the means and opportunity, or freedom, for people to gradually become better citizens. As the people themselves improve, so too will their governments and the way they do business around the world. The unfortunate mistakes you see us do are the ones we are learning from.
I don't think the US is the finest land upon the earth. I think it is the country that leads towards the day the whole world has evolved beyond nationalism and the culture of conflict. I do however believe it is the best land in which to head out aimlessly on a motorcycle. | |
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