I have seen Captain Compression is a right wing American.

Americans dont understand the WORLD

At a dinner once in London, a Texan said to me: "Before posted here in
London, I had never heard of Europe." He was about 55 years old.

There are a 1001 facts supporting the basic fact that the USA is alone in
this world: a crime ridden nation in which corruption is the norm. Most
American companies lose money and Ametricans always use the "hard sell"

The Internet we always hear is "American" even "Gore invented it." The fact
is that the Web was invented in Europe by British person Tim Berners Lee.
Before that the Internet was only used in government/universities as a
network and had no commercial value. It was simply a network of public
computers.

The same "attempted theft" applies to countless inventions from Europe,
which Americans try to say are American. The simple truth - almost nothing
is invented in America. Americans just borrow a lot giving the appearance of
income.

By the way Captain, Europe is not a nation.

"Captain Compassion" <res0mp8t@NOSPAMverizon.net> wrote in message
news:0m3jp09hmmk1vv1ta9hbtrr5odt834qtpn@4ax.com...

Europe: the Wrong Nation?
By Joshua Livestro Published 11/16/2004
TCS

"Why him again?" This headline in the German weekly Die Zeit seems to
get the post US election mood in Europe just about right. George
Bush's re-election seems to have left the European center-left
perplexed and bewildered. How could this happen? Who's responsible?
Who's to blame?

The obvious answer is: the American voter, that's who. "How can
59,054,087 people be so DUMB?" the British leftwing tabloid Daily
Mirror screamed the day after John Kerry finally conceded. The Belgian
state broadcasting corporation VRT devoted an hour of its precious
time to a discussion of this very question. One of the members of the
discussion panel made an interesting anthropological observation: It
seems the further inland you go, the more primitive America becomes.
In the heartlands, America is still for all intents and purposes a
Stone Age culture: "On the one hand you have an incredibly developed
society, cosmopolitan, on the forefront of technological development.
On the other, you have a large number of Americans who live very
rurally, who still live off agriculture, whose gaze is turned inwards
and for whom the outside world hardly exists."

These Stone Age Americans, who are forced to live without the comforts
of the New York Times or CNN, know only one reality: "Their commander
in chief who wages war and attacks Afghanistan and Iraq as a reprisal
for 9-11. That's the image the average American has of the world.
Reality is somewhat more nuanced, of course." Thus spake the authentic
voice of Belgian foreign policy, the new Foreign Minister Karel de
Gucht (a worthy successor, it seems, to the diplomatically challenged
Louis Michel).

Anyone who reads these remarks by de Gucht will agree that stupidity
is indeed an ugly thing. Equally ugly is the other explanatory factor
often cited for the American voters' misguided faith in George Bush.
According to this theory, Americans aren't necessarily stupid; it's
just that they've just been brainwashed by the American axis of evil:
Baptist churches, talk radio and, of course, Fox News. Every day,
proponents of this theory argue, Americans are made to swallow a dose
of theocratic rightwing propaganda. The end result of all this
brainwashing is the rise of a fundamentalist electorate that
enthusiastically - sorry, make that: fanatically - supports the crazy
Christian in the White House. A journalist working for the Dutch
Christian Broadcasting Corporation named Chris Kijne observed that on
November 2, America "experienced a fundamentalist coming-out." In
secular European circles, reading the Bible and professing one's faith
are condemned as dangerous activities. And not just in secular
circles. Just last year, the secretary general of the German council
of evangelical churches, Manfred Kock, accused Bush of being a
"religious fundamentalist" (which raises the question of what it is
that German evangelicals stand for: irreligious relativism perhaps?).

All this ridiculous postulating about the supposed stupidity of the
American voter is basically an attempt by Europe's progressivist elite
to convince itself that "it could never happen over here." Oddly
enough, that also seems to be the conclusion of the much more rigorous
analysis of last week's results by the Economist journalists Adrian
Wooldridge and John Micklethwait. In an echo of the arguments put
forward in their book The Right Nation, they present Bush's victory as
a logical consequence of the long conservative march through the
institutions. Voters prefer Republican candidates over Democrats
because they are convinced Republicans now best embody the typically
American values of self-reliance, love of God, family and country, and
liberty under the law.

Unlike most of their European colleagues, Wooldridge and Micklethwait
are quite willing to accept a vote for Bush as a rational choice. But
- and unfortunately there is a but - it seems they only regard this
choice as rational in an American context. Hence the subtitle of their
book: "Why America is different." In other words: they too accept the
European mantra that "it could never happen over here."

This emphasis on American exceptionalism could be interpreted in two
different ways. It could, of course, be that the authors are simply
restating the old European position in a more sophisticated way. There
is certainly evidence in the book of a misguided sense of European
moral superiority, at least towards some Americans. For example, the
authors make little effort to disguise their contempt for America's
Christian communities, whom they routinely refer to as "absolutists"
(read: fundamentalists). This contempt for the Christian right seems
to have inspired one of the few truly bizarre passages in the book. In
it, they accuse Evangelicals of trying to push American foreign policy
in a pro-Israel direction on the basis of an "Evangelical belief that
the Second Coming will take place in Israel - and that it will be
preceded by the conversion of the Jews to Christianity." This sort of
conspiracy theory is worthy of Karel de Gucht, not of serious
journalists writing for one of the world's most respected news
outlets.

The second interpretation argues the exact opposite of the first one.
In this version, the fact that "it could never happen over here" is
actually really a bad thing. After all, if America is the "Right
Nation," where does that leave Europe? The Wrong Nation, with the
wrong ideas and the wrong policies, doomed for ever to wander the road
to serfdom? It is the flip-side of the moral superiority argument.
European intellectuals like to wallow in a sense of tragic destiny.
They think of themselves as the Greeks to the new Romans in America: a
powerless wise counselor to the all-powerful but ignorant new emperor.
Unable to believe in anything else, they have embraced imperfection
and relativism as their new Godheads. A complicated solution that
offers a half-answer is much preferred by them to a simple answer that
actually solves the problem. Their dislike of Christianity is, at its
core, a rejection of the Christian message of hope. They are
Schopenhauer's spiritual grandchildren, convinced that there is no
hope, not for themselves, nor for their fellow men, nor even for their
countries. The best we can do is muddle through.

There is no reason for right-thinking Europeans to embrace this
nihilistic view of life. Europeans aren't Aristotle's natural slaves.
Just like their American cousins, they are capable of dreaming great
dreams, fuelled by a passion for liberty. They have always been full
of entrepreneurial zest and a spirit of adventure. There is no reason
to assume that, once unleashed, their energy and creativity couldn't
help to fuel another European economic and cultural Renaissance.

The main difference between Europe and America is that Europeans are
still forced to put up with a political class that refuses to face the
political and social facts. Europe isn't the wrong nation; it just
doesn't have the right kind of politicians - yet. In that respect,
Europeans can take courage from America's recent past. Until 1980,
even America itself was heading for a dead end, with a political class
that had reconciled itself to a storyline of American decline. Then
along came Ronald Reagan, a completely different kind of politician:
optimistic, capable of embracing simple solutions if they were the
right ones, and willing to put his faith in the American people as the
ultimate problem solvers. We all know the end results of the Reagan
Revolution. Reagan's children have changed America from a country in
decline to a Right Nation.

What Europe needs is a generation of politicians in the Reagan mould.
Reagan's European grandchildren are already in positions of power and
influence in many European countries. It is up to them now to help
Europe shake off the shackles of defeatism.





----------------------------------------------------------------------
"Why would I listen to losers?" -- Arnold Schwarzenegger

"Long term commitment in relationships is only necessary because it takes
so damn long to raise children. Marriage may well be some kind of trick
to keep the males around beyond sexual satiation." -- Captain Compassion

"Progress is the increasing control of the environment by life.
--Will Durant

Joseph R. Darancette
res0mp8t@NOSPAMverizon.net

I have seen Captain Compression is a right wing American.

Americans dont understand the WORLD

At a dinner once in London, a Texan said to me: "Before posted here in
London, I had never heard of Europe." He was about 55 years old.

There are a 1001 facts supporting the basic fact that the USA is alone in
this world: a crime ridden nation in which corruption is the norm. Most
American companies lose money and Ametricans always use the "hard sell"

The Internet we always hear is "American" even "Gore invented it." The fact
is that the Web was invented in Europe by British person Tim Berners Lee.
Before that the Internet was only used in government/universities as a
network and had no commercial value. It was simply a network of public
computers.

The same "attempted theft" applies to countless inventions from Europe,
which Americans try to say are American. The simple truth - almost nothing
is invented in America. Americans just borrow a lot giving the appearance of
income.