You're wrong, Lawrence, America is not a Failed State. I must admit I was shocked seeing you argue that it is. You seem to have a pretty nice spread out there in San Jacinto and your dogs aren't bone jutty. So for you to claim that America is a Failed State, tells me there must be something reasoned very wrong for you to believe that. Let's look at your reasons.
(1) You claim that America has the highest crime rate in the world. That's not true. It is true that the US incarcerates the largest number of people in the world and that the incarceration rate is 4 times the world average and that some US states imprison up to six times the number of people as do nations of comparable population, and that the US incarcerates the most women in the world. But not to worry. You're very white and so you're six times less likely to be incarcerated as an African American, half as likely as a Latino. Just be sure to wear you skin white side out when you leave the house. (http://www.nccd-crc.org/nccd/pubs/2006nov_factsheet_incarceration.pdf)
As to comparable international crime rates, that's difficult to assess because there's no universal reckoning of what is a crime, nevertheless, there's this survey by the UN at (http://www.unodc.org/pdf/crime/seventh_survey/7sc.pdf.) Unfortunately, there's no synopsis so you'll have to go through the list country by country to determine who wins the bad guy award. I'm quite confident it won't be the US. So you see, your despondency over America is unfounded. Certainly our incarceration rates are abominable and reflects a residual substratum of racism throughout the country, but remember this, I was a twenty year on man sitting in a barbecue sandwich shop in Memphis when a Negro (that was the PC word then) entered and before the man could say "How do you do?", the cook-server-clerk shouted: "We don't serve niggers here!" That was only 42 years ago. Now they're only too happy to serve African Americans (except maybe for Denny's and, of course, there's Cracker Barrel won't hire no goddamn queers). This country is great. A long way to go still, yes, but it's getting better and better everyday -- thanks to the Leftists working to make it so. We have no thousand year old Slovak-Croat-Albania ethnic hatreds holding us up. Just 400 year old ones. But we're a lot further along than most nations in ridding ourselves of nationalistic and ethnic and religious stupidities. For instance, take that bigoted, fascist little shithead Virgil Goode, the Representative from Virginia who objected to Keith Ellison, the newly elected Representative from Montana, swearing in on the Koran instead of the Bible. If Virgil had had his way, I would agree, America is a Failed State, but he didn't have his way. America is still a free country even if under attack at home by indigenous fascists.
(2) You claim America has the worst political corruption. That's absurd. Yes, it's true that K Street owns several members of Congress, but so what? So do Labor Unions, so do the Evangelicals, so does Israel, so do the Handicapped, so do the Toothless too, not to mention the Aim of Idiots, aka, the NRA. That's not corruption, Lawrence, that's the game. Money matters. Pool your resources, buy your own Marvin's Garden Representative or, if you're one of the lucky ones, your own Park Place Senator. Free enterprise makes it possible to own any Congressman we can afford. No Representation without Taxation -- that's what people forget and campaign contributions are just another form of taxation. America is not a Failed State, it works perfectly. Too many people own too many Congressmen for that not to be true.
(3) You claim America has an out of control economy -- ach, you know what? I don't care. Like Brian, I'm tired of this question. But I can't end this without taking issue with you over your statement: "Jesus once told his critics, 'before Abraham was, I am,' and they took up stones to kill him. He didn't say, 'I am God,' but he described himself as having an attribute of deity and his critics understood him." -- No, they misunderstood him. They thought he was claiming to be the Messiah. He was just saying that he was OF GOD as we all are. There's nothing but God. There's nothing that's not sacred. Jesus got that right, at least. That's more than you can say for most of humanity. Jesus wasn't an American or a Jew or a Muslim or a Christian or a Croat or a Swede, he was just God like all of us, like the dogs, like the cats, like Mohammed, like Willie Horton, like Jeffery Dahmer, like you, like me. Jesus knew. And he knew there's no such thing as a Failed State. There are just Gods who have failed to rise above the pettiness that plays so rough, walk upside down inside handcuffs, crash it off say: OK I'd had enough, what else can you show me? (That from God Bob.) It goes and it goes.
Mike Geary very tired of politics Memphis----- Original Message ----- From: Lawrence Helm
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Sent: Friday, December 22, 2006 11:11 AM Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: India's fondness for AmericaJohn McCreery jumps to the defense of the Leftists and denies that any of them regard the US as a failed state. But where was John when the Leftists were weighing down the US with failed-state attributes? Perhaps they are more vivid in my mind because I responded to a great number of them and he did not. Here are the two definitions of a Failed State from Wikipedia: [1] A state could be said to "succeed" if it maintains a monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force within its borders. When this is broken (e.g., through the dominant presence of warlords, militias, or terrorism), the very existence of the state becomes dubious, and the state becomes a failed state. The difficulty of determining whether a government maintains "a monopoly on the legitimate use of force" (which includes the problems of the definition of "legitimate") means it is not clear precisely when a state can be said to have "failed". [2] The term is also used in the sense of a state that has been rendered ineffective (i.e., has nominal military/police control over its territory only in the sense of having no armed opposition groups directly challenging state authority; in short, the "no news is good news" approach) and is not able to enforce its laws uniformly because of high crime rates, extreme political corruption, an extensive informal market, impenetrable bureaucracy, judicial ineffectiveness, military interference in politics, cultural situations in which traditional leaders wield more power than the state over a certain area but do not compete with the state, or a number of other factors. John apparently prefers the definition in paragraph 1 above, but I, being confronted by Leftist calumny, found it covered by paragraph 2. Where was John when Lit-Ideas Letists were describing America as having the highest crime rates in the world, the worst political corruption, an out of control economy, an impenetrable oval office, law courts being stacked by the Bush administration, the head of the military (Donald Rumsfeld) interfering in politics, etc? It is true that no Leftist used the term "failed state" that I recall, but virtually all of the attributes of paragraph 2 have been applied to America in recent months by Lit-Ideas Leftists. I've not mentioned Joerg in the above because I've not seen him in action yet in heated defense of a Leftist cause. I have been known to get along with Leftists who don't find it necessary to ascend a high-horse of some sort and rail at me. As to John's comments about India, I'm not sure who is "both juvenile and dangerous," the author Daniel Twining or me. And what is John concerned about? I have read a number of articles like this one; articles that describe the growing affinity India and the US have for each other. Consider some of Twinings comments and explain how they are "both juvenile and dangerous, ". . . India's economy is growing at an annual rate of 8-9 percent and is forecast to surpass China as the world's fastest-growing economy next year. India remains burdened by acute poverty, yet possess an expanding middle class already larger than the entire population of the United States." Also, "India's rapidly expanding middle class is expected to constitute 60 percent of its billion-plus population by 2020. India is expected to surpass Japan in the 2020s as the word's third-largest economy at market exchange rates, and to surpass China around 2032 as the world's most populous country. India's relative youthfulness should produce a 'demographic dividend': While its 400 million-strong labor force today is only half that of China, by 2025 those figures will reverse as China's population rapidly ages." Also, "India's economic growth may be more sustainable than China's. Domestic consumption accounts for nearly two-thirds of India's GDP but only 2 percent of China's, making India's growth 'better balanced' than that of China's export-dependent economy, according to Morgan Stanley's Stephen Roach." In short, I don't think John's paragraph relates very clearly to the article on India I posted. Also, the question left "utterly unanswered," was answered in the article. John's comments about India's worry about Muslim states on its border are an implied criticism of the article, and yet the article says something similar. India is concerned about Islamic Militantism; which is another reason India is a natural ally of the U.S. For anyone who missed it, the article can be found at http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/013/094gntoy.asp
LawrenceIt's shocking to read something like that when one is communicating primarily with Leftists who assure us that there is but one "failed state," and that is the U.S.
John McCreery wrote:I have been staying out of our usual Punch-and-Judy exchanges, but this is so palpably nonsense as to be downright offensive. I doubt that there is a single "Leftist" on this list who regard the U.S. as a failed state, a.k.a., a state unable to perform such basic governmental tasks as collecting taxes, maintaining public order, managing the economy (not necessarily very well), etc. Especially after the 2006 elections, which appear to have demonstrated that the basic system of checks and balances built into the U.S. Constitution still has considerable life in it, the idea that we are in the position of Pakistan or Sri Lanka, where whole provinces are now under the control of forces that the central government's military is unable or unwilling to pursue, is palpably absurd.
Also, the idea that India is now our friend because India, too, is a Liberal Democracy leaves utterly unanswered the question of why India, which has been a democracy since Independence in 1948 (1949?) was for several decades a leader of the non-aligned nations, tilting, if it tilted at all, more toward the USSR than toward the USA. That India has a large Muslim minority and is profoundly worried about what is going on on its Western flank in the Middle East, and that India is gingerly trying to work out its relationship to its major global competitor China surely have something to do, in realpolitik terms, with its current tilt in the other direction. So have the visible and growing success of Indians as a newly visible and highly successful minority in the U.S.A. and the thousands of hi-tech jobs being outsourced to India via the Indian diaspora. On the other side of the equation, the USA sees India as a necessary counterweight to China, which is steadily eating the USA's manufacturing lunch and becoming a major competitor in energy and other resource markets as well and is struggling to balance support for India with support for Pakistan, whose combination of dictatorship, already existing missiles and nuclear weapons, and Muslim extremists who already control large parts of the country make it look like an increasingly fragile reed for U.S. policy in South and Southwest Asia to depend on. I am not saying, I hasten to add, that political ideas are irrelevant. But conclusions based on speculations based on political ideas alone are, as we have seen demonstrated in Iraq, both juvenile and dangerous.
John And Joerge Benesch added:
John: I doubt that there is a single "Leftist" on this list who regard the U.S. as a failed state (...)That's true, and now that it's Xmas time, Lawrence, let me assure you that we Leftists, for all our stubborn pigheadedness, consider the U.S. to be as good a country, and as good a nation, and as good a state, as the good old planet knows, or any other good old planet or solar system in the good old galaxy And if it were not for a few minor human rights issues and other trifles and paraphernalia, we might even consider it to be a hopeful candidate for joining us in the EU. So when you don't hear us sing its perpetual praise, and rejoice in the wisdom of its leaders, it's just because you meritoriously do already more than enough in this agreeable field, which is why we're only left (that's where "leftist" is derived from) the nasty, but necessary job of deploring its deficiencies. This is called "division of labour", and it's this that has made mankind grow and prosper.
And so, as Tiny Tim would say, God bless us, every one! joergfrom scroogy Suebia
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