Reply #100: I lived in Europe for a significant part of my life, they do have their own set of issues...

[liberation]

... no place on earth is perfect.

However, I appreciate the fact that at least their learned their lesson after centuries of warfare, famine, and brutal inequalities. I love hanging out with a lot of my friends in the old country, because a lot of them are educated and can carry a conversation on a multitude of subjects with a fair level of sophistication. I am not saying they don't have their fair share of knuckle heads (I believe that the percentage of dumbasses is fairly constant across national barriers), but there is no where near the same level of exaltation of stupidity as there seems to be in the USA. Heck, I love watching European TV late at night and watch debates in which philosophers are carrying on a rather deep and educated conversation. When was the last time the US mainstream media had a philosopher to talk about anything? Our society proactively chastises them intellectuals who spend all of their time thinking about, studying and analyzing human/social/systemic issues, and instead we prefer to interview Britney Spears on the meaning of the latest sociopolitical issues... because she looks hot in that whore outfit and does not speak in boring tongue like those awkward looking smarty pants. Because lord knows that catering to the lowest denominator is the path to achieve greatness!

My wife wants to explore living in Europe for a few years if/when we have kids. Every time we've been over there she had a hard time coming back, esp. now that she wants to expand our family and feels that parts of the EU are far more nurturing than the US is likely to be. A friend of mine from Spain came to stay with us for a while, and one of her first observations impacted me deeply, she basically asked us "where are the kids and your old people?" Over there it is normal to see hundreds/thousands of kids after school (or at all times during the summer) running around, playing, being boisterous, making up all sorts of fantasies while playing, in other words they live in a society which does not consider kids to be a nuisance... all the contrary, they believe in giving he chance to allow kids to be kids, and over there they still believe in what we have always known to be true: it takes a whole village to raise a child. Heck, in some parts it is almost a national sport to come out and yell at them to shut up because they are so loud.

Old people are not treated like a nuisance, they do not become a shame once their health deteriorates and the system is made so that families can concentrate on the emotional burden that disease brings without having to top it off with adding an economic burden the minute any human over there has the temerity of getting sick and stop being a good productive working bee. Old people are not shipped to some hot humid waiting room for hell far away. Also, my wife being the stauch feminist that she is, appreciates the fact that all her European female friends are fairly strong and secure (and very independent)... and if we have a daughter it would be great if we didn't have to fight with a society which thinks it is acceptable for the main role models for women to be composed of uneducated nitwits, who owe their success to the fact they can exploit their sexuality. It would be great to have kids whose first exposure to nudity comes way before their exposure to mindless violence.

What pisses me off is that a lot of the social protections in Europe were largely inspired by the American New Deal. I don't want this country to be like Europe, I live in one of the most amazing places on Earth (California). I simply want this country to live up to its potential. We can do better, because I know we have done better: simply open a text book and read about that fellow named FDR. I find it very very very depressing that most of my European friends can tell me when FDR was president, but a big chunk of my American friends couldn't even tell me what those initials stand for. And I weep when I realize a lot of those same people are now Democrats.

If we really want to pretend we're the bestest country on earth, we should start acting like it... Some wise person once said that the measure of any society is how it treats it most vulnerable members. Under that metric we fail miserably from any leadership position among societies.