Teenage German tourist raped on Indian train

[athena]

49. I, too, would love to go to India.

It's not right to paint an entire country with such a broad, negative brush because of the actions of a few. Doing so reveals a deep lack of understanding of what makes up a culture. It's especially misguided in reference to India, which is a diverse country that even has regions that are run by women.

What's ironic is that people in other countries make similarly unfair generalizations about the U.S. When I lived in Switzerland, I was dismayed to meet Swiss and French people who made extremely naive generalizations about Americans. One such generalization was that "Americans care only about money." I tried to explain that most Americans are good, honest people, but they wouldn't hear of it. They seemed to think that what they saw on TV and in the movies was a better representation of the U.S. than anything I could tell them from my own experience.

Liberals who refuse to go to places like India are, in some ways, like tea-party Republicans who refuse to travel outside the U.S. By staying in the U.S., the latter are able to continue to delude themselves into believing that the U.S. is still "number one" and that "socialist" countries like Canada and France are poor, dirty, and disorganized. Based on such beliefs, they vote for Republicans, who they think will save the U.S. from a similar fate. The result is roads that are not maintained and bridges that collapse.

In summary, I don't see how it helps anyone to refuse to visit another country. (On the other hand, it's better for the environment to save the jet fuel, so perhaps it's just as well.)