TRDean said:I am going to tone it down a little...you don't have to if you don't want. Anyway, this country is great because there are opposing points of view. The right and left made this country great, not just one...and if the country goes down it will lay at the feet of both parties.
We both have one thing in common...we both love this country!!
Rock on!
Love of one's country has got nothing to do with it. In our discussion, it's all about one's ideological position.
And when it comes to the individual's relationship to society as a whole, where one thus doesn't see the collective as simply hostile to his goal of building a bigger castle for himself, but as a mass of humanity which responsibly takes care of itself (himself included) with some basic socialized programs: I think the European socialist-democracies have got it hands down on the "American dream" and the so called American "way of life" -which has in reality meant that the collective interests have been utterly subordinated to those of the few individuals at the helm of the capitalist machine
The collective without personal responsibility leads to a demotivated society as in the past Soviet communism, however the kind of savage Anglo-American capitalism for which the State doesn't exist leads to the very undemocratic tyranny of the individual of today (like those at the head of the corporations and financial markets), which has led the market based world (an not only in the West) to the kind of disaster at the financial markets we have today and, consequently, a most perverse way of public spending by the governments.
Anybody even with a modicum of critical thought can plainly see that.