On Jun 27, 2006, at 5:27 AM, Ronn!Blankenship wrote:
At 09:26 PM Saturday 6/24/2006, Robert G. Seeberger wrote:
http://www.shoutwire.com/viewstory/16866/Top_5_Myths_About_America
[snip]
MYTH 4. The US doesn’t need improvement compared to other countries;
it is the greatest country in the world.
TRUTH:
Wrong again. I'll only cite the statistics here.
USA Ranking on Adult Literacy Scale: #9
(#1 Sweden and #2 Norway)- OECD
<<double-snip>>
So much for those "socialist" Europeans and those "backward" Asians,
hm?
We can do better than this.
Yes, we no doubt can. And hopefully will. However, one thing that
strikes me about most of the countries the author cites as #1's and
#2's is that they are and have been for a long time pretty much
monocultural and monoethnic. If the health and life expectancy and
literacy and such rankings of middle-class and above Americans of
northern Eurpoean ancestry are compared to those of frex Norway and
Sweeden and Iceland (who descended from pretty much the same gene
pool as the former), how does the former group rank? IOW, lets
compare apples to apples, not apples to a fruit salad.
Must be nice to imagine that you live in a country where a huge
majority of the population just doesn't count. Fsck the poor! They're
dragging us down! Kill 'em all and we'll have a rich people's paradise!
Which is not to say that the poor and the minorities (often the
same people) in the U.S. cannot do better, particularly as they
assimilate into the mainstream culture, learn a common language,
How many times did you have to study the talking points memo to
remember to put that one in?
and so qualify for employment which will give them a better
standard of living than they now enjoy so they can afford good
food, access to health care, education for their children (and
insist that they do well rather than blaming the school and suing
the system if little Susie can't read or little — or perhaps not-so-
little — Johnny gets into trouble), etc.
But /only/ if it's little Susie and Johnny? Little Su Si and Little
Juanito can get stuffed until they learn English like all /good/
Americans do.
Dave_______________________________________________
http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
