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Old 01-02-2008, 01:58 AM
 
Location: Boise
2,008 posts, read 3,315,811 times
Reputation: 735

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1)the events of 9/11 were tragic, indeed but the links to iraq have been weak at best, let alone that before bush was even in office he was running his piehole about invading iraq. bush and his cabinet tapped every drop of support out of that that they could and we all know it. It was just something emotional to all of us that bush and his chronies used to get us all fired up and support a war that he wanted long before 9/11. and as far as that goes, just how far do we have to go there before the ends stop justifying the means? the middle east is never ever ever going to have the wal-mart loving, apple pie eating, SUV addicted dreams that we have here. and planting that idea there at gunpoint doesn't make for a very friendly start.

2) America can't stand on its own without some pretty serious changes. the entire history of the system we have used and modified has been entirely dependent on someone working for nothing or close to it. we were founded on slavery, without slavery this country wouldn't exist as it does now, Asians built out railroads, and the Chinese build everything that we use in our everyday lives, don't believe me? other than your car i challenge any one of you to find 10 items made in the US before you find 100 made in china. we are addicted to oil from other countries and have used that to build out house of cards dependence on cars. civilizations have existed for thousands of years before the car, and we would be shaken to nothing but a depressed nation if we had to live without cars for a week. as far as alcohol fuel goes, when 4000 people starve to death every hour it is quite the moral issue that we want to plant corn so that we can make it gas and keep driving. there are few viable options for freeing ourselves from oil, and we should all face it right now that the only time americans will change their comfortable mundane daily habits is when we are absolutely forced to. lastly, dependence cannot breed superiority, dependence leads to inferiority.

3) as far as america having problems like any other nation, that says that we are like any other nation. yes, we have crime as all of us know, but saying that no country is perfect is saying that we are nowhere close to perfect. we cannon tout being the greatest nation, while we have the problems of other nations and civilizations before us. All nations crumble at some point or another, and it us usually for the same reasons. the route we are going is to crumble from our own problems, because instead of trying to solve them we are too busy spending money to be happy and trying to grasp that paris hilton lifestyle that will always be just beyond our fingertips.

lastly, this is america after all. there are bound to be differences in opinion with the diversity we have. the bird can't fly without both wings, polarization only isolates us from ourselves, how can we be united in such a way?
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Old 01-02-2008, 02:01 AM
 
Location: Assisi, Italy
1,845 posts, read 4,218,621 times
Reputation: 354
Quote:
Originally Posted by ck9 View Post
why do americans believe they are the greatest country in the world?. they dont even crack the top 15 in any kind of rating that matters. maybe its the 12000 murders a year. maybe its because the government sends young people to die to enforce the will of the corporations. maybe its the healthcare. you peolpe need to come out of your media induced coma and wake up because your country is in serious trouble. stop believing its your god given right to rule the world. ever think of why people attack you?. canada is very similar and no one attacks us. there is a whole side of the story that your not being told . its not religious fanatisism its that people in t
those countries don want to be occupied and exploited, can you blame them?
remember the british? when you drove them out what did you call yourselves? terrorists? insurgents?. remember one mans terrorist is another mans partriot. change your foreign policy this war on terror can never be won.
It is obviously because we are not a smart as you Canadians. We will always be inferior to you. I was in Victoria back in 2000 on your National Day. It was July1 I think. Your MC was saying stuff like "We don't speak American... we speak English".. "We don't have a President.. we have a PM". It was truly amazing how he made it clear that Canadians were superior to America and Americans based on these simple indisputable facts. Right then and there, I realized that I was not ever going to be superior to all others unless I, myself, declared it so based on any frivolous distinction I could imagine.

The US will never be half as great as Canada. Americans, well, we will just never be as smart as Canadians until we come out of our media induced coma and celebrate July 1 instead of July 4, bash ourselves, admit that Canadians are the greatest civilization in history, speak English and get a PM. Besides, saying "eh" after everything we say makes silly comments sound more like a question.

Last edited by Bob The Builder; 01-02-2008 at 02:26 AM..
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Old 01-02-2008, 02:04 AM
 
Location: Boise
2,008 posts, read 3,315,811 times
Reputation: 735
Quote:
Originally Posted by silas777 View Post
I"ll make it real simple for you! which country are people from all over the world literally dying to get into ? Canada? When people vote with their feet America is the hands down winner! Big time! God Bless The U.S.A
to quote an immigrant friend of mine...
"we didn't want to come here and live on food-stamps, we didn't even want to come here. but where we came from we would have starved to death, and the Us was the only place we could go with what we had to work with."

if canada was in the middle and america was up north, at least half of our immigrants would be dyeing to get into canada. most of it is a geographical issue, not an apple pie issue.
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Old 01-02-2008, 02:49 AM
 
5,764 posts, read 11,594,672 times
Reputation: 3869
Quote:
which country are people from all over the world literally dying to get into ? Canada?
Yes. Do a search for shipping container deaths. Canada doesn't have a land border with any underdeveloped nations, though, so the numbers are lower.

Thousands drowned last year trying to sail from the coast of Africa into Europe, particularly Spain and Italy, but also Greece. In fact, hundreds died sailing from Somalia to Yemen, and in turn, hundreds died migrating from Yemen to Europe or the UAE.

Lots of people die every year trying to make it into lots of countries. I'm not sure why this isn't better-known in the US. We are definitely not unique in terms of receiving desperate migrants. The Dominican Republic gets tens of thousands each year from Haiti. Thailand gets lots from Burma. China gets refugees from North Korea. People die trying to make it from Turkmenistan into the major cities of Russia, or even from Sudan into Chad, Chad into Libya, and Libya to Italy. It's a global problem.
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Old 01-02-2008, 07:46 AM
 
19,198 posts, read 31,374,691 times
Reputation: 4013
Migration isn't a global problem, it's a global phenomenon. People wish to move from one locale to another. This has been going on for millennia. It's how people got from Europe to North America to start out with. And, by the way, the majority of those did not come here in order to enjoy religious freedom. The majority came here in order to escape debts and avoid prison terms.

Meanwhile, other people draw artificial lines and create artificial laws that make migration more difficult and more dangerous than it otherwise would be. People try to make it more and more difficult (and hence, more and more expensive) to migrate legally, and then they are actually surprised that illegal migrations begin to occur. And then they actually assume that this must be because illegal migrants are morally inferior as people to themselves. What a freaking joke. Here's a clue or two. By their incessant demands for "low prices...always low prices" American consumers have ASKED producers to cut back on high-cost American labor inputs and replace those with low-cost Chinese labor inputs. This happens, and then we BLAME the companies who did what we asked them to. We have at the same time ASKED producers to give those jobs that remain in the US to those who will work for the lowest wage. This happens, and then we BLAME the companies who did what we asked them to, AND we BLAME those who offered to work for the lowest wage. Everybody seems to be at fault in this equation except us...the people who made it all happen to begin with, and who then make up complete mythologies with which to justify their own blame-shifting. It is not true that undocumented workers do not pay taxes, it is not true that they visit and then welch on hospital emergency rooms at rates higher than others of similar socio-economic status, and it is not true that their children take up space in public schools that they have not paid for. It is not true that they cause more traffic accidents or commit more crimes than others similarly situated. All these are stories concocted in an attempt to excuse ourselves from having ASKED that all this migration of jobs and people occur to begin with.

Migration is not something that can be stopped. Indeed, at this point it is something to be encouraged, as various of the world's problems can be traced to the differential rates of mobility for capital versus labor. That might be a point for a different thread, but the fact remains that the only challenge to any society anywhere is how to handle migration efficiently. In our case, trying to round up and deport 12 to 15 million is not efficient. It simply isn't going to happen. Get over it. There are two things that one might work toward instead...

1. Make it cheaper and easier to come here and work legally than it is to come here and work illegally.

2. Remove the incentive to come here at all by making it possible for people to achieve a similar standard of living in their countries of origin.

Unless and until we begin to work on these actual sorts of solutions, we are going to continue to confront problems with inevitable migrations that are of our own making. People like to talk about something called personal responsibility. Maybe we should try displaying some of that for a change...
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Old 01-02-2008, 07:54 AM
 
Location: Journey's End
10,203 posts, read 27,050,356 times
Reputation: 3946
These two solutions would not only change the course of immigration, it would ameliorate some other global challenges: poverty, infant mortality and morbidity, and economic parity, among others.

I would suggest (2) precede (1) and that it begin sooner than later.

Quote:
Originally Posted by saganista View Post

1. Make it cheaper and easier to come here and work legally than it is to come here and work illegally.

2. Remove the incentive to come here at all by making it possible for people to achieve a similar standard of living in their countries of origin.

Unless and until we begin to work on these actual sorts of solutions, we are going to continue to confront problems with inevitable migrations that are of our own making. People like to talk about something called personal responsibility. Maybe we should try displaying some of that for a change...
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Old 01-02-2008, 08:14 AM
 
Location: Wallace, Idaho
3,353 posts, read 6,641,439 times
Reputation: 3589
Quote:
Originally Posted by Fleet View Post
A "scam?" Do you mean we were not attacked on our own soil on 9/11?
Yes, but not by Iraq.
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Old 01-02-2008, 08:18 AM
 
Location: Wallace, Idaho
3,353 posts, read 6,641,439 times
Reputation: 3589
Quote:
Originally Posted by ck9 View Post
why do americans believe they are the greatest country in the world?. they dont even crack the top 15 in any kind of rating that matters. maybe its the 12000 murders a year. maybe its because the government sends young people to die to enforce the will of the corporations. maybe its the healthcare. you peolpe need to come out of your media induced coma and wake up because your country is in serious trouble. stop believing its your god given right to rule the world. ever think of why people attack you?. canada is very similar and no one attacks us. there is a whole side of the story that your not being told . its not religious fanatisism its that people in t
those countries don want to be occupied and exploited, can you blame them?
remember the british? when you drove them out what did you call yourselves? terrorists? insurgents?. remember one mans terrorist is another mans partriot. change your foreign policy this war on terror can never be won.
You speak many hard, unpleasant truths here, and not all Americans are blind to their country's defects. Some of us are fighting to change those faults. Just understand, when you say things like this, that lots of people will rush to defend their country, even if it's far from perfect. "My country, good or bad" -- there's a lot of that mindset out there. Blind devotion, jingoistic nationalism ... those are indeed some of the things I'd like to see change, and it would be nice to see in their place a greater capacity for giving ourselves an honest assessment when we're wrong. But don't hold your breath. There are just too many people who mistake belligerent, arrogant nationalism for actual patriotism.

Last edited by Adrian71; 01-02-2008 at 08:27 AM..
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Old 01-02-2008, 08:19 AM
 
Location: Londonderry, NH
41,478 posts, read 59,540,014 times
Reputation: 24856
Maybe there are too many people in too many places that cannot feed them? That is either a failure of the agriculture of the economy. Or maybe 6+ billion people exceeds the carrying capacity of the earth at any ecomomic level.
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Old 01-02-2008, 08:21 AM
 
Location: Londonderry, NH
41,478 posts, read 59,540,014 times
Reputation: 24856
Another comment: Most of the 9/11 terorists were Saudi citizens. Why did we not attack Saudi Arabia?
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