The experience you mention traveling through Jamaica is the exact experience my Swedish husband had travelling through South Boston on the subway. It's all relative.

I know that feeling of freedom. It is one of the few things I miss. But it is an illusion, in as much as it is NOT AVAILABLE to each individual. YOU may be free to go get educated. You should have been born in an underpriviledged family, never been read for, been beaten, been shuffled through an indifferent or malicious school system, undefended by an equally indifferent family, so that you were still illiterate when you dropped out, joined the more than 30% (I've lowered that from what I've heard, since I cannot quote the source) of americans who can't read and understand a newspaper, and then tell me all doors are open for you. I don't give a shit how much personal responsibility one individual has, he can't teach himself things he doesn't understand or doesn't know exist.

Once again, I can't quote my source since it was an item in the news here about 3 weeks ago, but you can look it up if you're interested, that the US promises assistance, but only actually coughs up about 20% of it.
 

For one who admittedly has never had to undergo the deprivation you speak so passionately about, you act as if you know what it's like.

You don't.

I may not have grown up in the ghetto, but neither did I have all of the opportunities you seem to want to grant me. I, like many of my peers, have had to overcome certain obstacles.

Moreover, I know people who have overcome much to take their place as productive members of our society. I'm so tired of people making excuses for their own ignorance, apathy and violence. It's always somebody else's fault.

I'm even more exasperated by the likes of you sitting in your ivory towers and criticizing our country and people like me for the fact that some people just simply would rather take from society and contribute nothing.

Have you ever lived in a bad neighborhood where gunfire is a nightly occurrence? I have. Yet I still got up in the morning and went to my job, was faithful to my wife and responsible for our children. I availed myself of help when it was needed, but refused to become a dependent of the state.

I got away from those neighborhoods as soon as I could, just like so many honest, working-class Americans have over the last several decades. The worsening state of our urban culture owes more to Johnson's Great Society than to any failure from those of us who hold to traditional values.

The Left in this country has created this divide by excusing the worst kinds of dissolution and blaming it on society.

It's horseshit.
 

If I don't know what it's like, then you don't either.

Do you doubt statistics, or do you simply not understand them?

Check which procentage of "failures" come from bad areas. I guess they are just genetic missfits, since their backgrounds are no handicap.

I didn't grow up rich. My parents both worked, and we had no "luxury". My silver spoon was the fact that my parents were educated, and they educated and stimulated me at an early age, giving me what it takes to create my own opertunities. I grew up among a great deal of poverty, actually. Just not the big city, shooting kind. I have, on the other hand, had a compelling need to get close to people from all situations and backgrounds. I've moved around a lot, and known an incredible number of people.

I don't know whose fault the current state of the United States is. The only relevant thing is what is done about it now, and with what methods and intentions.

How, once again, can a Christian feel such an overwhelming identification with a country? Jesus wasn't even born there.
 

Jesus may not have been born here, but I would challenge you to point to a nation where His teachings have borne more fruit.

We purged ourselves of slavery, and continue to push through the thorny issues of racism to promote quality of life among all people.

Statistics are just like any other supposed fact. They can be distorted and presented to support an agenda. Since you have failed to quote a source that I can study further, your assertions are merely that.

If I were to research any such findings, here are the questions I would ask:

1. Is the study legitimate from a statistical perspective? In other words, are there enough subjects to be statistically representative?

2. Is there a valid control methodology in place? You make the implied assertion that the failure rate is higher in bad areas? Is the comparitive modality legitimate enough to take into account all the variables present and not slanted to affirm the bias of the researchers?

3. Quantify the terminology. What constitutes 'failure'? What is a 'bad area'? How are the rate calculations done? Is sufficient attention given to weighting factors?

4. Is the study of sufficient length to rule out short terms anomalies?

So, you see, I do understand a bit about statistics. More than enough than to blindly accept them as evidence of a particular hypothesis.

Moreover, I distrust those who have an exaggerated amount of blind faith in such things as insight into reality.

While I acknowledge that one's circumstances cannot help but have an impact on how they move through this life, that doesn't excuse anyone from responsibility for their actions and choices. Everyone in this world, no matter how dire their circumstances, has the ability to choose good over evil, love over hate, industry over indulgence, etc.

While I believe that Jesus has called us to look after the widow and the orphan and to promote righteous judgement to liberate the oppressed, I fail to see how that is the responsibility of the government.

I believe that whenever people stop pointing fingers at vague and unreachable targets, and roll up their sleeves and act on their beliefs, that we will begin to see the kind of change that is needed.

Think globally, act locally. When I am there for my local brother who is on parole and struggling to contain his temper, I am exerting far more influence than I ever could writing rants about US government policy.

If you want a righteous society, start producing righteous people -- not wannabes.
 

Gosh - this hits home with me. How many of my Canadian family assume things about the US. Just spent a week there defending our choice to move.

Common comment is that 40 million Americans are without health coverage. Perhaps.

The implied is that these receive NO CARE. False.

The impled is that these are the poor. False. Last week I was an uninsured resident of the US. I'm far from existing under the poverty line.

I've lived in both countries. I have made my choice in a rational educated way. My current state evidences the correctness of my choice. I won't force that on another - but by golly I do know the difference between Canada and the US. 99% of both Americans and Canadians have no real knowledge of their own neighbor. I suspect this is true globally and generally.

I wouldn't compare US and Sweden or Canada and Sweden unless I have lived there. And I wouldn't go on 20 yr old experiences either. A lot can change in 20 yrs. Canada has changed so much so in 10 years I can't begin to describe it.
 

Drake,
You introduced slavery and allowed it it exist foralmost 100 years. It was the slaves themselves who did most of the liberating. The northern states only used abolition as a strategic platform, not as a matter of principle. That is fact. Go check it out. The US massakered and cheated entire nations of Native Americans in its expansion across the northamerican continent. Fact. The great Christian Workings of the United States of America is something you're going to have to spell out if you want to convince me of anything. I've lived in two of the countries that have helped populate your "great" nation, and I can promise you that any culture existing there has followed immigrants from Europe and merged. You are familiar with the term "Melting Pot"? What any of it has to do with Christianity is beyond me. What are those fruits you keep talking about? In what way do they reflect Christian morals?

I completely agree with you that the actions you perform in your immediate circumstances are the most telling, but don't kid yourself. If you place a vote in any election, or even advocate the politics of any person or group and by doing so convince some other individual to vote, you bear responsibility for all the actions that group does that you are able to find out about. You do vote?

Are you honestly saying that you doubt that most criminals come from impoverished circumstances? I am amazed. All that knowledge, and to no avail.
 

Historical fact:
Slavery was abolished in Denmark 1792, in Great Britain 1807, in France 1814-18, in Latin America 1810-1820, USA 1863.
 

Jeanne,

I personally had nothing to do with slavery, and to say that America introduced slavery is pure ignorance. Your broad stroke on the abolitionist movement is a total slap in the face to many sincere, activist Christians who spoke out boldly and risked their reputations, careers and lives to end this great human injustice.

So what if politicians co-opted the movement to their advantage? Did that make the movement any less righteous?

Native Americans did suffer some and were exploited some, but some also visited savagery on innocent people who only wanted a better life. Typical, one-sided liberal bias in re-writing history.

Melting Pot? Of course. But let's not forget that many, many people came here fleeing religious persecution because Mother Europe had been bleeding itself for a few hundred years over which Church was the only church. No such thing here. Freedom of worship is protected, and no one risks losing their freedom or their life for what they believe. Our greatness comes from embracing all who came to our shores, something that their native countries could not or would not offer.

I do vote, but I would certainly fall short of accepting total responsibility for the choices of others. Sure, I did my part to get Bush elected, but his sins are his own. I acted in good conscience, choosing both the man and the platform that I felt most represented my values. Does that mean I am bound by groupthink? Sorry, that's a liberal thing.

The impact of Christian belief on the development of our country, and in the working out of our national sins in the past is a matter of record. I don't need to convince you, nor do I believe it's possible. Like most liberals, you reject certain premises outright, without examining the facts from a variety of sources.

I don't honestly know whether most criminals come from impoverished backgrounds or not. Certainly, one might expect the majority of thieves to have such challenges. However, are they thieves because they are poor, or are they poor because they choose to steal rather than work?

I honestly have no patience for debating these tired, old, liberal platitudes. The left in this country has had 50 years to demonstrate that their hand-holding, excuse-making, programs of entitlement can solve these societal ills.

Fact is, things have only gotten worse. Socialism/communism is a global failure. Free market capitalism is the only proven system to allow all individuals the opportunity to rise out of poverty. Christians in our society have long stood in the gap to help those who are willing to do their part to be productive, meaningful members of society.

The nanny state has only wasted billions upon billions of dollars to demonstrate what Christians have always known and that liberal refute in the face of overwhelming evidence - those that won't work don't deserve society's largesse.

Making a case that poverty increases one's inclination towards a life of crime doesn't relieve them of personal responsibility for what they do. Neither will God. Even Malcolm X saw that clearly.
 

So your defense of your position is to posit a comparative timeline of the abolition of slavery?

So what? What does that prove? Does it discredit those who fought long and hard against a very powerful, economic lobby that simply didn't exist in those other countries?

You'll need to do better than factoids.
 

Please don't accuse me of ignorance when you missunderstand what I say. I meant that the USA first introduced slavery into its culture BEFORE it took it away. That doesn't give it much credit. It STARTED its government allowing slavery. It then proceeded to remove it much later than other countries in the world.
No one said the indians didn't do bad things. It's what people do when other people take their land. It's what the americans did to the british in the revolutionary war.

The timeline to slavery wasn't my defense of anything. You challenged me to point out a nation that had born more fruit than the US, and you listed abolition as one of the fruits. I pointed out that that fruit was born earlier elsewhere.

I really don't think you should call me a liberal. Liberals wouldn't.
 

Jeanne:

You're giving The Drake an intellectual ass kicking!!!!

Love you Drake, but what ( in 3 sentences ) are the two of you trying to admit/accomplish?????

My point - We live in the land of freedom and corruption. WE have a choice each day; work or not. Captialism is ok. It lets people advance themselves. The group of "poor" have to pick themselves up, get some education and work for a living like the rest of us!!!!

Unless they have some $$ in the bank!
 

To continue to respond is a total waste of my time.

Anonymous, despite his/her miss on the intellectual 'ass kicking', at least shows some common sense.

Capitalism works.

The US is not a perfect place, but it's a damn sight better than anywhere else for the average person. Maybe not for the occasional expatriated co-ed who hooked up with a Swedish doctor, but I doubt that Anonymous or myself would find Sweden as hospitable.

My contention is that our Christian heritage has historically provided a counterweight all sorts of evil, the issues arriving from slavery being only one example.

Making an out of context argument about how slavery started and stopped out of a tenacious commitment to deny that there is good in our country, and that we ARE NOT the big, bad bully in the global neighborhood is intellectually dishonest and belies an underlying bitterness -- the source of which I won't even bother to examine.

Slavery was stopped in countries whose practice of it predates our existence as a sovereign nation. It was introduced into our country while we were a colony of Great Britain. The Abolitionist Movement in this country was a direct consequence of the Second Great Awakening in the early 19th century. This was AFTER the first northern states constitutionally abolished slavery within their own borders, beginning with Massachusetts in 1793, only one year after your earliest citing and less than a generation after our victory in the Revolutionary War. Slavery was abolished in all states north of Maryland by 1830.

Meanwhile, the states in the South had a great economic investment in slavery because of the surging boom in cotton production, made possible by the invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney in 1793. Thus, the battle lines were drawn.

Furthermore, your own dates are contradicted by a quick Web Search.

FYI, France 1848 (after an initial abolition in 1794 and restoration in 1802).

United Kingdom - 1833 (to include all colonies).

Denmark - 1848 (to include all colonies).

It's so easy to distort facts to conform to your bias, but from 5 minutes of Internet research I've demonstrated that we, during our birth pains as a nation, were at the forefront of the global reform regarding the institution of slavery.

But the real point of this whole discussion, at least from my side, is that the greatness of our country lies in its historic, pluralistic, Christian foundation -- something that the liberals and self-styled intellectuals want to deny. If our country is headed down the wrong path, it is only because of these forces at work in our culture over the past several generations. Like the dynamic of the Second Great Awakening and the Abolitionist movement, I hope that people in our country start to awaken to the great evil that pseudo-intellectual relativists like Jeanne represent in the Western world.

May God send encourage them all to move to Sweden.
 

You, sir, are an ignorant ass.
I checked our encyclaepedia for those dates. I have no intention or need to lie or distort, as I have nothing personal invested in the outcome of any discussion. I am out after the truth.

It is considerably easier for an american to move to Sweden than for a swede to move to America. Here, you would be required to prove that you were needed to do a job that there was no swede available to do, or you would have to marry a swede, or you could ask for political assylum if you were qualified (though that possibility is being radically reduced here by the conservative element, not the truly liberal one.) To enter the US as a swede, you would have to find an acceptable american citizen who was willing to support you financially even if you were married to an american and entering the country with that person. You know absolutely nothing
about Sweden, and until you do you are only displaying your ignorance and bias by making staements about it. I will continue with this in a while, but I have my family to take consideration of right now.
 

I may be an ass, but I am far from ignorant. You looked at your encyclopedia. I looked at mine. Two different sets of dates. My point being that a complex issue can't just be settled by making some blanket, poorly researched statement just to affirm your underlying prejudices.

Also, I know some things about Sweden. It is the home of Volvo and Ericsson - and possibly IKEA (but I haven't been able to confirm that). According the WHO, it had one of the world's highest suicide rates in 1999 -- 19.7 per 100,000 among males and 8.0 among women. The US comes in at 17.6 for men and 4.1 for women.

I also know that they maintained neutrality during both World Wars (we could have a LONG discussion about that), and that they have not been too keen on the EU.

Of course, I never claimed to know anything about Sweden. You took my remark about my PERCEPTION of how I, as an American not married to a Swede, would fare in terms of opportunity compared to what I enjoy here in the US.

Your response has only served to affirm my perception, which is that I would have a hard time doing as well in Sweden as I do here.

I have no bias one way or another towards Sweden. About the only thing that affects my opinion is the fact that you are there, spouting your nonsense about MY country, despite the fact that you have not lived here for two decades.

I'm sure it's a nice place. Clean and cold and exuding European sophistication.

And considering that the Hindu-to-American ratio in my office is quite high at the moment, I'm pretty damn sure that your assertions about the difficulty in moving here are pretty much baseless.

That would be the difference between reading about something and living it.
 

It was my husbands foster sister, married to an american, who was not allowed into the states unless someone was willing to sign a paper assuming economic responsibility for her. Her husband is a marine, so I don't believe he's on any particular naughtiness list. She is entirely a-political.

The suicide rate is directly correspondant to the amount of darkness during the winter months, becoming higher (with perhaps some exception, as is the case with most rules) the further north you go, and with most suicides occurring in the darkest period of the year.

The neutrality of Sweden is a nasty subject, not because they didn't join the war, which is just fine by me, but because they avoided being invaded themselves by having some sort of secret agreement with Germany. My father is Jewish, and grew up during the 2nd world war, so you can give up any attempts to pretend the USA was against Nazi Germany and protective of the jews before the very end of the war. It wasn't until Russia and england had practically assured victory that the US flew in and joined the war.

Its not your fault you have been fed with propaganda in favor of the USA since you were born. It is your fault that you don't question it and find out the truth, or at least the other versions, of the situations you base so much of your self-esteem upon. You are building your house on the sand, and I am giving you a proper warning. If you want to pretend to yourself that I have some personal gain in condemning the US it is your choice, but you are wrong. I don't have any illusions about the Swedish, or any other government. The people of Sweden have been much healthier than the people of the USA, but as I said, that's going down at a rate corresponding to the increase of American input in the media, school literature, clothing, food, etc. Sweden is not clean any more. It's practically as littered as the States at this point. We are considering taking our daughter out of the school system and home-schooling her, because the level of factual education is sinking at an alarming rate and being replaced by indoctrination into capitalism in all its glory.
Your Hindus? What was the level of education they had when they came to the states? The US is notorious for sucking up the intellectual fruits of other countries educational systems. My husband's foster sister had a highschool education, and no qualifications beyond packaging bread.

I am completely and adamently opposed to EU. I only wish more Swedes had come to their senses before they voted for joining with a 51% majority. Since joining, the majority are very negative to EU, which has lower standards in issues such as the environment, animal treatment, food quality, working hours, additives to food, and other things I can't think of at the moment, than Sweden had before entering. In order to ensure "fair" competition, Sweden is being forced to lower its standards. Hardly an improvement.

Because of the Gulf stream, it is not colder here than in northern USA. It is, however, darker in winter and has a shorter (and cooler) summer.

If you think the world is a dump, and I don't, maybe you are in the wrong part of the world.

I never said there is no good in the US. I said you (we, actually, because, like it or not, I AM an american)) weren't first to abolish slavery, nor did the founding fathers care enough about the issue to include it in the constitutional rights of the first American citizens.

When did your quick search on the web turn into an encyclopedia, by the way?
 

Ah, Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia. That's my encyclopedia.

It continues to amaze me how you can turn even the most innocuous comments into an opportunity to launch into an anti-American.

Propaganda comes in many forms, and from many sources. Until you can make a legitimate case that the Bible is propaganda, and that the Holy Spirit is not real and active, I'm fairly satisfied that I'm doing OK weeding through the bullshit.
 

For someone who thinks the bible is the only source of information to be relied upon, you sure do have a lot of firm opinions about subjects it never mentions.
 

Why do you keep trying to portray me as an enemy?
 

Point One: The Bible speaks to the whole of human existence.

"All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work." II Timothy 3:16,17

Whether we are working in Corporate America, or for the Swedish government, or formulating public policy, Scripture guides us.

Point Two: Scripture speaks very harshly to those who deny or distort the delivered message of the Gospel.

"He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me, scatters." Luke 11:23 AND Matthew 12:30

"I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned! As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned!" Galatians 1:6-9

"But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God—having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with them." II Timothy 3:1-5

I personally am not sure whether you are an enemy, but you surely don't affirm the whole counsel of Scripture concerning the Gospel.

I would warn you, however, not to try and teach these beliefs of yours as Christianity. They simply are not.