So Is The USA The Greatest Country In THe World? If Not, Why Not?

[Gracie]

Is the U.S. the greatest country in the world? Not hardly. The most powerful....yes.

Canada, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, are all better countries than the U.S.

They are not weighed down by the Zombie Confederacy know as the Southern States.

Move then!!

I would rather stay here and oppose you.

50,000 Hispanics a month are turning 18.

We are going to win.

Win what?

 

[Chris]

Move then!!

I would rather stay here and oppose you.

50,000 Hispanics a month are turning 18.

We are going to win.

Win what?

Elections.

 

[auditor0007]

This video, assuming that the statistics are true, got me to thinking about whether or not we REALLY believe that the USA is the greatest country in the world and if not what we need to do to achieve that status.

WATCH THE 3 MINUTE VIDEO and see what I'm referring to. It's quite a clip.

The Most Honest Three Minutes In Television History - YouTube

Interesting summation, and one that I agree with to a point. No, we are not number one in everything, but overall, and for the size of our country, we are still the greatest country on the planet; however, we are not nearly as great as we think we are, nor are we as great as we once were. We no longer try to solve problems but instead blame someone else for those problems. The greatest example of this is how so many blame poor people for receiving government aid, as if everyone on assistance wants to be on assistance. We have a health care system that is an absolute mess and is projected to eventually cost us one third of our GDP, when at one time we only spent five to seven percent of GDP on healthcare. Of course, there have been some good trade-offs, and I am not suggesting that we should try to reduce healthcare spending back down to seven percent of GDP. But everyone should recognize that our spending on healthcare is out of control and we should be looking for a solution rather than what has been happening over the past couple of decades.

If you believe we are no longer the greatest country on this planet, tell us what country is. You see, every country has its own set of problems. Again, we don't stand out above many of the others, but they certainly do not stand above us either. What this country needs is a little bit of nationalism. It's been missing for a long time. I'm not talking about the kind of nationalism that sends us to war against countries who cannot defend themselves against us, and then occupying them for years at a time to in the end pack up and go home not having changed a single thing. I'm talking about the kind of nationalism that says we need to get people working again, to make certain that our young people can afford to get the education they need. It means making it so that people who work a 40 hour week can actually afford to pay for a home, put food on the table, and have decent medical care. It doesn't mean they should be made wealthy or be paid as much as those with more experience and/or education, but it means pay them a living wage. If we do that, then government won't have to support them, and it saves everyone money.

We need to stop the incessant fighting and actually try to solve problems. Honest to God, the best thing we could do is send every single Congressman/woman and Senator packing and just start over, but that will never happen. Maybe we just need to write to our representatives and tell them that they need to shape up or we will send them packing. I don't know, but what we are doing now is not working.

 

[auditor0007]

Is the U.S. the greatest country in the world? Not hardly. The most powerful....yes.

Canada, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, are all better countries than the U.S.

They are not weighed down by the Zombie Confederacy know as the Southern States.

Those are all countries that offer a great deal and should be considered great countries, but they are also relatively small countries compared to the US. Canada's size does not make it big with a population barely more than one tenth of the US. Also, none of these countries pay for their own defense. Of course they have defense spending, but they all count on the US for their ultimate protection, yet they don't pay for any of it, US taxpayers do.

 

[Unkotare]

And I'm sure they would have "engaged us in trade" while plundering Europe. :

That would be their most reasonable move at that point.

Yeah, Hitler was known for being reasonable, wasn't he?

It wouldn't have mattered. If he managed not to be assassinated by one of his generals, he still wouldn't have had the means or manpower after the war in Europe (or at the beginning of it, for that matter) to cross the Atlantic and invade, occupy, and hold a land mass and population the size of Canada, let alone the US. Stop reading comic books and start reading history books, dope.

 

[Unkotare]

Is the U.S. the greatest country in the world? Not hardly. The most powerful....yes.

Canada, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, are all better countries than the U.S...

Which one do you live in?

 

[Freewill]

Now that I think about it this is just more liberal tar pit BS that has trapped a lot of folks. Every time the liberals are caught with their fingers in the cookie jar they start threads like this. I see they are starting abortions threads nothing changes. If you don't think the USofA is a great place then fine but I am not sure why you just don't move. Maybe because the country you think is better won't have you or there is no opportunity for you. Don't know but reading some of the whining ass posts in this thread I can't see how anyone could be happy and stay in America. My thoughts are that we have become a bunch of spoiled whiners.

 

[zeke]

If you are ultra rich in the USA, if you are a part of the plutocracy of the USA, there is no better place on earth than the good ole USA.

That's a fact you can take to the bank.

 

[Sunshine]

If you are ultra rich in the USA, if you are a part of the plutocracy of the USA, there is no better place on earth than the good ole USA.

That's a fact you can take to the bank.

That really isn't true. I live in a roomy two bedroom, 2 bath home on a beautiful lake and I am not ultra rich or part of any plutocracy. My furnishings are pretty and my life is easy. None of those things do I feel the least bit apologetic for. In China I dined in the home of a doctor. The only difference in his apartment and our low income housing projects is that our project apartments have bathrooms. And in Cairo I didn't see any homes like mine. They have 20,000 people living in a city designed for 2,000. Out between Cairo and Giza there were some nice condos going up. But with unemployment there so high I wondered who could afford to live in them. Given that I am now very ill, any more international travel is not likely, but I've worked with veterans who have been to many countres. They tell me that countries like Swizerland are beautiful, and my friend who was deployed in 2003 tells me she really liked Germany. The thing most people who are complimentary of other countries say the most is that there isn't such a 'rat race' to keep up with the Joneses, and they feel more relaxed. But keeping up with the Joneses isn't required here. You can choose to live below your means and save tons of money if you are inclined in that direction. You really don't have to have the biggest house on the block, nor do you have to put every dime you get your hands on up your nose. The choices are all yours.

We are still able to criticize our country, and when someone in government does something heinous, we are so honest it ends up in headlines. There may be other places I would consider living, but at this juncture I know I will never see them. But we do have many Americans living abroad for various reasons. I know some and their choice has more to do with wanting to retire in a fancy pants place and nothing to do with any negative thoughts about America.

 

[noose4]

Funny how so many conservatives get offended with a thread like this but then join anti American groups like the Tea Party to protest how awful our nation is.

 

[Sunshine]

Funny how so many conservatives get offended with a thread like this but then join anti American groups like the Tea Party to protest how awful our nation is.

Do tell. How is the TEA Party anti American?

 

[noose4]

Funny how so many conservatives get offended with a thread like this but then join anti American groups like the Tea Party to protest how awful our nation is.

Do tell. How is the TEA Party anti American?

People who dream about second amendment solutions are not doing such because they love their country.

 

[Unkotare]

Funny how so many conservatives get offended with a thread like this but then join anti American groups like the Tea Party to protest how awful our nation is.

Since when are groups like the Tea Party "Anti-American"?

 

[noose4]

Funny how so many conservatives get offended with a thread like this but then join anti American groups like the Tea Party to protest how awful our nation is.

Since when are groups like the Tea Party "Anti-American"?

Since they dream about taking down the U.S. government with second amendment solutions, if they love the U.S. what is all the protesting about?

 

[Kondor3]

Concerning the earlier chatter in this thread about WWII and our participation in it and what might have happened had we not engaged the Axis when we did...

We fought in Europe to protect our own interests. A fragmented, diverse Europe of nation-states cannot threaten us or the rest of the world like a unified and focused Europe could, back in the day when Europe was highly militarized.

We emerged from both wars with great debt but also with great accumulated riches from allied armaments contracts and, most importantly, we emerged intact, with respect to both infrastructure and our collective political and societal identity - intact as a nation.

During WWII, our internal political leadership set down the correct priorities - defeat the most dangerous first (Germany) while holding the less-dangerous (Japanese) at-bay and making some inroads against them - and then turn all our might against the Japanese once Europe was secured.

We did not win WWII by ourselves - we were merely a decisive scale-tipping factor.

The British (and their Empire-Commonwealth), the Russians and the Chinesse, and others, all had a little something to do with it as well - both in the year or two before we jumped-in and brought ourselves online, and in the years following our entry, and including a lot of help from our allies on the technology end, as we scrambled to pull our military out of its 1920s doldrums in order to fight a 1940s war.

Had we tried to stay out of the war, both the Nazis and the Japanese would have spent the 1941-1945 (-ish) timeframe consolidating their gains and scaling-up their global reach and then they would have made their move against us from both the east and the west in a coordinated pan-Axis assault against the Americas - North and South - to eliminate the last bastions of independence and the last potential threat to their domination of the planet.

The only power capable of stopping them on the Euro-Asian supercontinent were the Russians, and things were not going well for them during the early-to-middle going, and our logistics support helped turn the tide. Without our help, the Russian turnaround might have been delayed much longer until it was too late, or never materialized at all, and the Axis would not have had a Russian Front to worry about.

With their new global reach in the 1945-and-beyond timeframe, the Axis may very well have overpowered the United States, having first overwhelmed or seduced Mexico and Canada, in order to have operational bases from which to strike at us.

But that is the stuff of Alternative History fiction writers.

One thing is certain - it would have been very, very lonely, out there all by ourselves on that thin limb-branch, without the Brits and Russians and Chinese for company.

Our victory in WWII does not make us 'the greatest country' - but it does put us solidly in the 'Greats Club' - and in the top-tier on the membership list.

 

[Unkotare]

Funny how so many conservatives get offended with a thread like this but then join anti American groups like the Tea Party to protest how awful our nation is.

Since when are groups like the Tea Party "Anti-American"?

Since they dream about taking down the U.S. government with second amendment solutions, if they love the U.S. what is all the protesting about?

I don't hear a lot of people from that corner talking about "taking down the government." I hear a lot of ordinary Americans demanding that the government not take away their rights as enumerated in our Constitution. I hear an awful lot of patriotism from them, even if some tend toward conspiracy theory paranoia.

And did you really just post "if they love the U.S. what is all the protesting about?" Really? Do you understand anything about the US at all?

 

[noose4]

Since when are groups like the Tea Party "Anti-American"?

Since they dream about taking down the U.S. government with second amendment solutions, if they love the U.S. what is all the protesting about?

I don't hear a lot of people from that corner talking about "taking down the government." I hear a lot of ordinary Americans demanding that the government not take away their rights as enumerated in our Constitution. I hear an awful lot of patriotism from them, even if some tend toward conspiracy theory paranoia.

And did you really just post "if they love the U.S. what is all the protesting about?" Really? Do you understand anything about the US at all?

Second amendment solutions and shooting people are brought up by tea party types all the time.

 

[Sunshine]

Funny how so many conservatives get offended with a thread like this but then join anti American groups like the Tea Party to protest how awful our nation is.

Do tell. How is the TEA Party anti American?

People who dream about second amendment solutions are not doing such because they love their country.

Funny how so many conservatives get offended with a thread like this but then join anti American groups like the Tea Party to protest how awful our nation is.

Since when are groups like the Tea Party "Anti-American"?

Since they dream about taking down the U.S. government with second amendment solutions, if they love the U.S. what is all the protesting about?

I am waiting with bated breath for that loooooooooong list of links you have showing that any member of the TEA Party has made threats of violence toward anyone in government.

And FYI: it is perfectly legal in the US to make demands that government change. Your problem is you live on welfare and you know if that is going to continue you have to take it from the people who have earned it.

"We, the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow men who pervert the Constitution." Abraham Lincoln

 

[noose4]

Do tell. How is the TEA Party anti American?[/QUOTE]


People who dream about second amendment solutions are not doing such because they love their country.[/QUOTE]

Since they dream about taking down the U.S. government with second amendment solutions, if they love the U.S. what is all the protesting about?

I am waiting with bated breath for that loooooooooong list of links you have showing that any member of the TEA Party has made threats of violence toward anyone in government.

And FYI: it is perfectly legal in the US to make demands that government change. Your problem is you live on welfare and you know if that is going to continue you have to take it from the people who have earned it.

"We, the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow men who pervert the Constitution." Abraham Lincoln

[/QUOTE]

Tea Party Getting Violent? 10 House Dems Report Threats, Vandalism - Crimesider - CBS News

Black GOP Official Resigns Citing Arizona Tea Party Threats

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2010/03/20/87743/code-red-gun/

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/05/30/tea-partier-way-to-change-susan-collins-mind-on-immigration-is-to-shoot-her/

 

[PMZ]

We've gone from caring about our country to caring about ourselves, each of us. We don't want greatness, we want cheap. We are willing to sacrifice being part of the greatest country, to being all of the greatest ego. We used to honor opportunity because we could earn accomplishment from it. Now we want acomplishment bestowed on us by the country.