Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: greenspirit who wrote (21237)	5/3/1998 3:30:00 AM
From: Grainne	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 108807

Michael, when you wrote the following passage, it sounded like you were telling me where I should live: <No, country is perfect. America is no exception. What makes this country uniquely is it's ability to learn and grow and change with the times. Too many countries of the European union haven't changed for centuries. Ireland is no exception. Believing the past is some sort of mystic salvation is fool-hearty at best. The lifestyle you describe in Ireland can be had in nearly every state of the union. All you have to do is buy a small farm, turn off your T.V. and purchase a few goats. Real peace of mind doesn't come from geography but from your daily inner enjoyment of life. Your belief that the Christian right is somehow interfering with your daily happiness is nonsense. You can simply choose to ignore whatever you see as objectionable.> I have never said Ireland is paradise. Fifteen years ago, when you were there, the economic growth they are experiencing now had not even started to take hold, however, and it was a very poor country. Now it has the strongest economy in Europe, and is referred to as the Celtic Tiger. It also has a very high rate of home ownership. The article you cited was about a terrorist act. The guy who got shot was a member of a radical breakaway IRA group, which is acting up because they do not agree with the treaty that is now being discussed in Northern Ireland. Terrorists tend to have weapons wherever they are. I never said Ireland was perfect, and certainly there is some violence in all countries. However, it is very, very much lower than here, per capita. I would not dream of living in Northern Ireland, because it is way too violent. Curiously, however, their per capita rate of violent deaths is way less than America's. The 1995 figures are now out for gun deaths everywhere, and we have the highest rates of gun deaths--homocides, suicides, and accidents--among the world's 36 richest nations. Our per capita rate for that year is 14.24 per 100,000 people, while Northern Ireland is 6.63, and in 1995 they were in the middle of a very violent war!! My daughter and husband visited Idaho, and found it full of white supremacists and guns. I don't want to buy into the stuff about "Southern culture" being a causative factor in the school shootings, because I think it is a prejudiced way to look at things, but most of them have been in the rural south. I get nervous about how strange American culture is when I venture as far east as Sacramento, so I really don't think I fit in very well here in rural America. I appreciate that you do not think the United States is in a decline, but we just disagree on that one. The diminishing middle class, the increasingly desperate poor, violence among children and the fact that we imprison more of our population than any other nation and have schools in severe decline are all enough to convince me that things are going seriously awry here.