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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Grainne who wrote (42329)	6/28/1999 12:25:00 AM
From: The Philosopher	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

And you call yourself a patriot. If you think Europe or Japan are so much better than the US, why do you stay here? Economics: We have by far the highest GDP in the world. Our stock market is the envy of the world. We have the highest personal disposable income. We have more opportunities for personal wealth. Have you ever visited Europe and seen the lifestyle that middle class Europeans lead compared to ours? How many millionaires have the European computer companies created? How many of the 100 richest people in the world live in Europe? They aren't even close. Education: Our public schools are, I agree, not the best in the world. But our university system is unrivalled. Our academic research is unrivalled. The percent of citizens attending college is unrivalled. The opportunity to attend higher education is unrivalled. Freedom: I can only think you have never lived in a European country to say that. The level of government control in Europe dwarfs ours. No other nation has our commitment to a free press. If your Japanese friends feel safer on the streets (I notice they don't mention facing poison gas in the subways) that is true of most police states. Immigration: The facts speak for themselves. People want to come here from virtually everywhere, not just Mexico. We are still the land of opportunity and freedom. <If you want to blame our gun laws for our being violent, credit the philosophy behind them (that individuals, not government, know what is best for the people) with the other benefits of our society.> That last statement doesn't make sense to me as it is written. Can you say it in another way? Seemed pretty straightforward to me, but then you do have trouble with straightfoward English. The basic philosophies of Europe and Japan put the rights of society as a whole above the rights of the individuals. They circumscribe many personal liberties, including the right to own guns, in the name of the public good. The US generally (though this is declining) respects individual rights as a primary value. Including the right to bear arms. Our focus on individual rights is at the root of our success as a nation and of our insistence of the personal right to own guns.