Too much freedom in America, but you can't even play online poker there.

Morality is not intrinsic to any national character. America benefits from living in an extremely placid region of the world. They have no immediate enemies on their borders who can cause them serious harm, and it's easy to be moralistic and righteous when you're in this position of being safe, sated and secure. Germany elected the Nazis after a period of hyperinflation, depression, humiliation, and exploitation. If America experienced the same conditions, there sense of morality would have eroded and they would likely have likely elected a system similar.

you have though.

I was born in Canada, I think the United States is a better place to live generally; much better climate, greater job opportunity for those with technical skills, lower prices, less taxation and govt heavy-handedness. Europe is probably even worse with regards to prices, taxation, and govt interference, dunno about the job opportunity.

Thankfully, I'm an American citizen by jus sanguinis.

America is pretty good in a lot of ways. You can live a wide array of lifestyles, and it has delivered wealth and comfort to people on a scale that has yet to be replicated worldwide (after all, if we chopped ourselves into a couple dozen countries of 2 - 50 million people some of them would be quite exceptional by any standard, so it's not really fair to compare us to places like Singapore). On the other hand, I don't think that thinking that makes me nationalistic. I think Alabama football is better than other football programs, but I hate them.

Also, the observation that the younger generation is a lot less patriotic is definitely true. Obama did a great job picking up the young vote, but McCain was sitting there with a "Country First" campaign theme that fell dead flat with younger voters. Would have been a great approach for a cold war campaign, I guess.

Obama ran on a no wars, end current wars, end drug war, government transparency, end lobbying, cut deficit in half, etc campaign. It is going to be hard to run another one of those, but I am sure he will try.

This hasn't stopped America from finding enemies

You know, I just got a ****ing steak, from a 4 star steakhouse delivered to my door by this nice young man employed by a company called thefastfooddude.com.

Basically the way this service works is you pay these guys to bring you fast food.

That's how it started. How much more American can it get than paying a 3rd party source to go to McDonalds and buy you a Big Mac and bring it to your door because it's midnight and you're drunk/stoned?

Now it's grown, you can get steak/sushi/seafood, along with all your fast food favorites.

Delivered to your door, by college kids.

That, my friends, is why I love America.

Now excuse me while I enjoy my Ruth's Chris Filet Minion, cooked to a perfect Medium Rare, with a wonderful baked potato in front of my 72" 3DTV as I enjoy the best of NASCAR in HD. Then I'm going to do a few shots of JD, and smoke my finely cultivated reefer.

Enjoy your fascism guys. I'm drinking in FreedomLand tonight.

^Sounds awesome, Enjoy!

I have no emotional attachment to the arbitrarily defined land mass that my parents happened to be on when I was born. I didn't volunteer to be here, and as such, I have no moral duties or obligations to serve the interests of those who have declared themselves in charge of this arbitrarily defined land mass.

I feel like a gun or 4 should be included in here somewhere

also Ruth's Chris..... WP

ITT we learn that Ruth's Chris does takeout.

Not exactly. These guys essentially go in, order, then immediately request it boxed.

Yeah there is a service like that serves downtown Seattle. I thought you were in a more rural area DBJ?

I find it ironic that you seem to get all of your impressions of american attitudes from "MSM media" and then at the same time point out that the "MSM media" mostly relays whatever the US govt wants it to, which is naturally going to be inaccurate.

So which is it? Are your conclusions about american nationalism reasonable because the MSM media relays accurate portrayals of american attitudes (towards military veterans, authority figures, rule of law, etc) or does the MSM relay a distorted portrayal of american attitudes at the behest of the US govt?

Well, I do but it's not that rural.

The great thing about Atlanta is you can find little patches of "rural" that's only ~30 miles outside of the city.

I give these guys a good amount of business, particularly with execs that I can talk into ordering in rather than going out.

dbl,

wtf does that gif illustrate? It's way too ****ing small for anyone to be able to read the text which indicates what the colors mean.

I lol'ed. Wp.

food snobs severely underrate ruths chris

number 1 at killing the enemy

If you're willing to work hard the US is the best place to be. If not I am sure other countries are probably better for you.

US is still the world leader in science and technology and it's not even close. We just need to get our primary education system together.

more like get our visa system together, we are currently rejecting world class scientists in the name of american jerbs

Hardly much of a problem, except for the profs who want cheap labor. There's no shortage of homegrown science grad students.

Map of the US, 1986 - 2011

Purpose of the map is to classify states based on Right To Carry laws.

Green = Unrestricted
Blue = Shall Issue
Yellow = May Issue
Red = Rights Restricted