retired_yolanda

retired_raistlin1979

Panagea,
I'm not overly worried about the US gov't and the internet. Since most of the internet exists outside the US, they are largely powerless to control it. They keep trying, and they'll keep failing. That said, stupid laws like this should never be passed in the first place.

I don't know where you get your polls, but I simply don't believe them. I live in the States. I am very politically aware. I grew up in a very blue (Democrat, left-leaning) state, with a very liberal (at least for US terms) family, have liberal friends, and only a conservative wife & in-laws. I currently live in a swing state. Yet I still see people all around me who are very conservative, very religious, very anti-gov't programs, gun happy... all sorts of "right-leaning" things. The sheer number of people I know who still think Iraq was A Good Thing is utterly frightening. First we were "Fighting teh terrorists," and it has seemlessly morphed into bullshit about "spreading teh democracy" and "freeing teh people."

So on most issues, I flat out disagree that most elected officials are more conservative than the vast majority of the public. That's crap. Provide your polls if you will, but even then I would doubt the neutrality of such polls, and could probably find contradictory evidence. And it's quite possible your polls might only show a small issue where the public & gov't are out of sync (the environment would be likely, as big business hates environmentalists), but does not show the greater picture.

I realize I only see a small portion of America at a time, but I still live here. Please realize that unless you have excellent evidence to back up your claims, I have little patience for a foreigner - who has obviously spent little or no time here - telling me that my assessment of my own country's political leanings are incorrect.

The one point I will happily concede is that both parties pander to their big corporation sponsorers, and this provides an inherent bias to the US gov't. But really, I'd expect that to be happening in most democratic countries unless lobbying & campaign contributions are severely limited by law (which they should be).

Change voting to where you can rank candidates instead of voting for a single candidate. That would destroy the 2-party system and make it wide open, and would be healthy for all. And it'll never happen with two parties in control.

retired_raistlin1979

RELIGION IN U.S. SCHOOLS

Religion is not taught in US schools to my knowledge. I didn't see a shred of it growing up in the suburbian schools of Buffalo, NY. Creationism & ID were not taught, except for a 5 minute blurb in one Biology class that there's an alternative view to the several days we spent talking about evolution.

The U.S. has other serious issues with separation of Church & State, but so far the schools have largely been spared. Our courts have not been so fortunate at times.

ATHEISM

atheism - "the theory or belief that God does not exist"
religion - 1. "the belief and worship of a superhuman controlling power, esp., a personal God or gods" 2. "details of belief as taught or discussed" 3. "a particular system of faith and worship"

Religious people can not prove God exists. Atheists can not prove God does not exist. Atheism still requires belief in something you can not prove, although they atheists don't like to be told that. Agnosticism is much more the "rejection" or at least "avoidance of all religions."

Sorry folks, but atheism still counts as a religion.

LITERACY

As for literacy, I have a simple suggestion - the US has far more recent immigrants than most other first-world countries, to my knowledge. Spanish speaking Hispanics, especially. And literacy is only tested in English. I would bet these immigrants are a large reason why US literacy lags behind. I bet if you test American-born children, they'd score reasonably well.

kov,
So you're at 6% unemployment right now. Ya know, the US is usually at 5-6% and by almost all accounts has a "very good" economy. 6% is probably very close to the "natural" unemployment of your country. Your previous unemployment <1% was unnaturally low, and I'm betting the quality of the jobs that existed as a result were not as high.

retired_jsammut

You SO miss the point with atheism. Firstly atheists (such as me) can't prove the non existance of God as you can't prove a negative. It's like asking a scientist to prove the non existance of the element flubblubium. He can't, because it doesn't exist. Secondly, atheists don't have the need to disprove the non existance of God: we're comfortable with the fact that there is no supreme being. And that really, really bothers those with a faith in ... whatever.

Atheism is many things, but it isn't a religion. There is no belief structure. There is no "holy book". There are no legends and stories which form the basis of some the religious code real religions use.

retired_crazybonejr

You're also well off the mark with Agnosticism. The best way to describe Agnosticism is the belief that a higher power may, or may not exist, and/or the existence of such a higher power can not be proven at the current time and/or with current technology.

Thinking that the Christian God, for example, doesn't exist doesn't fit with that definition. That's far from rejection, or avoidance, of religion. It's basically "undecided."

It's no wonder that people don't understand what Atheism and Agnosticism are, when people like you, Kallinan, are defining them as the same thing, and wrongly at that.

retired_tinkfaeree

This is making me laugh. There are schools in Germany where there is one German kid and 98 non-German ones. Munich is a town with a pretty low foreigner percentage. It's "only" about 24%.

African refugees due to civil wars there. Kurdish refugees. Palestinians. People from Iraq, Afganistan, refugees from the Kosovo (Albanians), homeless people from Croatia and Serbia... they all are definitely not going to the US. There is no green card for refugees, didn't you know?

But: at least in Germany, almost all these people are nice and honest and smart people. They work hard - usually harder than their pure German counterparts. Because they have to. And usually, they are better at the new language than the natives. Because they actually do spend time learning and practicing.

My experiences with US American people are similar: it's not the Jeffs, Jims and Bobs that are the typical smart and educated people. It's the Visvanathans, Abduls and Chens (and Diegos) who came to the US and are working hard to achieve something.

retired_lapepe

iamthequinn put it very nicely.

I just can't see how you can say ahteism is a religion. A religion demands some sort of supreme being and/or "holy" book. Point 2 in the definition opens up all possible kinds of fields of the stamp "religion". Math is believed in, discussed and taught, but I doubt anybody would call it a religion. The two other points are more familiar with how we perceive religion.

There were quite a few polls in Michael Moore's book "Stupid White Men" as he discussed this very topic. He's far from my favourite character, but he is a smart man and does bring serious issues to the table, so one shouldn't overlook him just for his sometimes doubtful "soundbites" and video-techniques.

This has also been mentioned many times by Noam Chomsky, an author I respect tremendously and have read quite a bit of. As I have exams tomorrow and the day after I can't go through the books now to find the references, but I'll see what I can do in some days (Wednesday will be a hard party night )

I don't remember the names of the US gallup organizations that did them, but perhaps you know some of them.

I understand that on some issues Americans are to the right, but on many others they are to the socalled left. I know the polls mentioned more social spending and increased role and power of the UN for instance. These are not small issues, and both US parties are to the right of the population. Same with the environment and Kyoto.

I agree with you on the voting system. As long as the two ruling parties can veto any changes, and prevent 3rd parties from participating in presidential debates, the chances of change is very small. In that regard it's the same as with the UN SC veto system, which is terribly undemocratic.

I very much doubt that literacy tests in the US are standardized so much that there are only english tests. Some regions are basically only spanish-speaking, so that wouldn't make any sense.

retired_yolanda

Completely valid.

retired_jmeshew

Dammit, y'all keep pulling me back in

Michael Moore is propagandist for the extreme left in the U.S. I would take anything from him with a large grain of salt. He's about as reliable as Rush Limbaugh for being forthright and objective. He doesn't bring issues to the table, he takes issues that are on the table and seriously skews them to make conservatives and republicans look bad. He is no different than G. Gordon Liddy, Michael Savage or some of the other extreme right pundits out there.

I also have to agree with Kallinan about the political climate in the U.S. Neither party is to the right of the average American. The Dem party is to the right of a minority of its constituents, but you would be surprised I think, to see how many Democrats are fairly conservative folks, especially by the standards of right and left we established in this thread. The republican party is definitely to the left of a larger portion (over half I can reliably estimate) of its constituents. I will grant that if you go to certain areas, mainly heavily urbanized places on either coast (and the upper midwest like Chicago, Minneapolis, and Detroit), you will find more left-leaning Americans. But by and large, the parties are not to the right of the population.

I can pretty much guarantee you that if any of the issues you mentioned were put to the people in Texas, you would find the majority more to the right than the politicians. And I tell you it would be no different in probably 35 other states. I would expect a slim left-leaning majority on such issues in New England (leaving New Hampshire and possibly Maine aside), New York and New Jersey, some places in the upper midwest- probably Illinois, Michigan and Minnesota, and then the three west coast states: California, Oregon, and Washington plus Hawaii. So, again, I have to agree with Kalinan that I don't believe you understand the political situation here.

Regarding Atheism, y'all are proper to say it is not religion in the same sense as Roman Catholicism, or Sikhism, but nevertheless, it IS a belief system (if not codified or structured), and one which absolutely informs your worldview and the choices you make. In that sense, it is the same as a religion. An atheist doesn't believe in a God, but you find your truth from someplace, whether it be from people who you respect, or within yourselves. Either way, your belief in man rather than a God constitutes a belief system that governs you as a moral agent. Tell me how this is any different than someone being governed by a belief in a supreme being? And when you wish to make that the primary ethic taught in a school either overtly, or simply by ommission, you are preaching a belief system; you are telling children that the ultimate source of truth comes from man. You didn't beomce an atheist (if indeed you are) by waking up one day and being one. You thought about it, you looked into the matter, you read and studied, and you decided that there is no God. You certainly did not find your facts in a vacuum. Ergo, you believe in something that has a source, and that is as powerful to you in shaping who you are as a religion is to another person.

retired_jmeshew

Your experience must be limited then. Go to any U.S. university, or corporate offices. It's not the Abduls and the Diegos by and large that are working there. Go to a consruction site, an orchard, or a cab stand, and you'll find your Abduls and Diegos. Now I am not belittling that a bit; I come from working class roots, and was myself in the construction trades for years. But to say that the recent immigrants to the US are the smart and educated people is ridiculous. Yes, many of them are working hard to achieve something, and many are smart people, but the U.S. largely attracts unskilled laborers from Mexico and Central America. They simply do NOT, for the most part, make up the "smart and educated" of the U.S.

And to be fair to Kalinan, he said the U.S. has more recent immigrants than MOST other first world countries, not all. Germany sounds as though it may have more or at least as many proportionally, but is Germany's experience typical of other EU countries? Oh, and what do you mean by no green card for refugees?