Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Gopher]

[Ya-ta Boy]

I'll play.

A hundred years ago we were a rigidly racially segregated country where all women were second-class citizens at best, but through government leadership we have dismantled that immoral system and have reached the point where we have nominated someone who does not fit the Middle/Upper Class White Male Protestant mold. One thing that is right with America (and I'm not saying others don't as well) is that we do address fundamental social problems. It's not as fast or effectively as I'd wish sometimes, but we do it.

[blaseblasphemener]

I'd wager a case of Bud that Glen Beck has never been outside the continental United States, and has certainly never lived abroad. I'd also wager he knows next to nothing about the culture or political systems of Western Europe, Australia, or even Canada. How then can he be so sure that America is the closest thing to perfect? Oh, that's right. It says that on Fox news and that Lee Greenwood song. Well, if the closest thing to perfect means cheap gas (errr), pick up trucks, right to have a closet full of guns, segregated cities, haves and have nots education, all manner of drugs available at your local middle school, tens of thousands of disabled war vets, unaffordable health care, 100s-of-billions in tax-payer bailouts for unregulated financial systems...then hell yeah! it's the closest thing to perfect, fer sure dude!

[Ya-ta Boy]

The trouble with a guy making a nationalist statement like 'We're the greatest country in the world' is that it inevitably runs smack up against the nationalism of someone from another country saying the same thing. It reminds me of "The Three Christs of Ypsilanti" where three delusional patients were put on the same ward to see what would happen.

[blaseblasphemener]

[Gopher]

I agree with Ya-ta Boy's view on this nationalist statement...

[R. S. Refugee]

[sojourner1]

What's right with America?

1. We have conservation efforts to protect our natural resources and doing quite well with it, too well, but a large part of the improvement is a result of moving factories to Asia and decreasing physical economic activity so our pollution has been decreasing for a couple decades. The forests are looking more like they should, wildlife populations have significantly increased, and the fish are larger now than they were 20 years ago. It's doing so well that we now have too many deer, fish, and other things so the conservation departments are doing controlled kills to promote healthy populations.

2. We still have enormous stretches of wildness and untapped natural resources.

3. We have ethics and laws about littering bottles, food wrappers, and other trash into the natural environment. We actually have environmental education, ethics, and laws surrounding protecting and respecting nature by leaving nothing more than footprints when going outdoors.

4. We know how to do tourism such as with theme parks, hotels, national parks, and many other types of places.

5. We have some of the greatest museums, scientists, and researchers the world over.

6. We accommodate the entire diverse range of tourists and business people the world over.

7. We have it all. Anything you want to get, to be, or do; it's all possible. (within your personal financial scope) Too bad todays economy and job market lacks to support #7 like it used to.

These are what I recognize as being right about America.

[Pluto]

American ingenuity is one of our greatest stregnths. Due to this ingenuity, I honestly feel that I live a better life than that of John Rockefeller. Think GE bringing us everything from the power plant to the steam iron. Today we have everything from Microsoft to Intel to T-Mobile in order to make sure we have some of the most seamless communication infrastructure never before imagined. Downloading everything from books to movies over the Internet has been a huge convenience; Thanks Apple and Napster. The United States has been the epicenter of the greatest creation of wealth the World has ever seen.

[mithridates]

Wikipedia is what's right with America. Also this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Sol582A_P2299_L456-A590R1_br.jpg

[Ya-ta Boy]

[Dome Vans]

The article seemed fair enough until this bit:

[mithridates]

[RJjr]

The thing that makes the USA the greatest nation is the diversity of the women in America. Inexpensive land that keeps getting cheaper is an added bonus. Now, if we could just have a little bit of freedom and bravery, the place would almost be a utopia.

[daskalos]

I'll play, too. I'll even play sincerely, even though I'll wander into areas that are rather narrowly personal.

It's been forty or fifty years since a gay person has had to worry about his/her license plate number being taken down when parked in the parking lot of a queer bar. There are indeed some few countries that are further along the road to full equality for gays, but America is near the top of the class in this regard, and getting nearer every year.

When it began, America was among the most progressive nations going in terms of the rights of citizenship, no matter how poorly we judge that position to be today (the 3/5 bit, the woman bit), and it has a solid record of eventually widening the scope of enfranchisement/citizenship to more and more people. We set the standard with "We the People," and even though we ourselves failed in that standard for well more than a century, even though other nations beat us to the punch in some areas, that phrase set for us and for the world a worthy goal, one that we are nearer to attaining than most nations on the planet.

In this, I am speaking broadly.

Speaking now from my parochial veiwpoint, I would argue that it was the work of the gays and lesbians in America in the 1950s and 1960s that has allowed some other of the Western democracies to advance further than America in the realm of GLBT rights. I truly believe that were it not for the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis, to say nothing of the drag queens who forced NY cops to barricade themselves inside the Stonewall Inn rather than face being torn apart, there would be no equal right to marriage in Canada, Belgium, Spain, The Netherlands, nor marriage under another name in Britain and half a dozen other countries in Western Europe. We may now lag behind, by just a little bit (though a crucial little bit in some cases), but in this, America did indeed show them the way.

And I'm fucking proud of that, and some day, America as a whole will be proud of that too.

Were I to encapsulate the ethos of the nation, I would suggest the motto, "America Tries." That is, we may still fall short of the mark, but we have a demonstrable track record toward achieving the mark of justice for all, no matter how stiff the resistance from the entrenched, privileged interests has been.