What makes America great?

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/4870/ConstitutionalErosion.html

 

mmmm... I miss 'In and Out Burger'... It's almost enough to make me buy a plane ticket right now. I'd eat that shit for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snack time....


And Pavel, what REALLLLY makes america great is that we can generalize and put everything into nice neat catagories... like wafflehouse... I still say denny's is better - I'll stipulate that IHOP can be a bit exspensive. Real truth be told, I miss the hole-in-the-wall breakfast joints in Allston, MA. Scrambled eggs, rye toast, gyros, and a coffee and an oj for about 4 bucks.

 

For me what makes America great is that its about 8000 miles away from me and my family - If a country in Europe acted like the USA to its neighbour countries we'd have nuked it by now

 

United States ain't great, not by a long shot, all you have is your economy, which at the present time is failing.

 

And Canada only got CANADRY .

 

Coca-Cola makes America great!.

 

In early 1900 when the original formula had a slight amount of cocaine in it ,, when the cocaine was removed the great depression of the 1930s came.

 

Exactly! Most people that I know from other countries swear they had more freedom where they came from than they do here anyway. And they're right, too.

 

Ok to be fair - NASA and MIT are two great things about America - I admit there are a couple of great things in the United States but that doesnt in itself make the USA great.
For the USA to be great it would have to be seen to be great not just have a few great things its built or produced but a political greatness and to be honest - the USA is seen to prefer force because its diplomats and politicians are too crass to have good diplomatic relations with countries - on the whole I think they lack a political maturity and astuteness that other countries take for granted in their politicians - the fact that Kissinger was the last great statesman the USA had says it all -- he may have been an asshole but he was one hell of a politically competent asshole

 

United States politics is 95% bullshit ( I'm not saying Canada and Europe is much better but that just adds to the U.S. poor image ).

 

Benjamin Frankin said, "Those who sacrifice Libery for security deserver neither".

John F. Kennedy said, "A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people."

Adolf Hitler said, "How fortunate for leaders that men do not think" - he also said, "The great masses of the people will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one".

Ari Fleischer recently said, "all Americans ... need to watch what they say, watch what they do".

Fascism is no longer just a word in America - it is a reality

 

Its no longer a word, its a cliche.

Get a grip. Try reading about what real fascist states were like.

 

THE DOCTRINE OF THE "FREE MARKET" - HOW IT'S PURSUED, PROTECTED AND PRESERVED

In the west, especially in the U.S., we're taught to believe in the doctrine of the "free market" uber alles, and that government should stay out of the way except to protect us from enemies (46 million with no health insurance and millions of poor single mothers and their children denied further desperately needed welfare help might disagree). The result is a society based on consumerism and a shop-till-you-drop and buy the latest and greatest "gadgets and trinkets" mindset. And a subset of sorts of consumerism is the element of "distraction." Instead of focusing on the state of the world or affairs of state, the government and its corporate media allies want us concentrating on the alluring array at the mall or who'll win the Super Bowl. We'll take care of the rest, they tell us. Trust us, we know what's best. As far as we can throw them, I'd respond. And I'd add the wisdom and admonition of the great independent American journalist I.F. Stone when he explained that: "All governments are run by liars. Nothing they say should be believed." He then shortened it to two words in his advice to aspiring journalists: "Governments lie."

Stone would have easily recognized and reported fearlessly on the mendacity of the Bush administration's current behavior. By using an ill-defined sham threat of terrorism and easy-picking dictators like Saddam, other "crazed Arabs" (Noam Chomsky's characterization), and labeling all other leaders who forget "who's boss" threats to our security, they've created an unjustifiable fear to support a permanent state of war, national security state, and "lockdown" America. They've done it to justify a strong military and homeland guardians to protect us from all those "barbarians at our gates." As Machiavelli said in The Prince - "It's better to be feared than loved." But when that leads to the unrestrained and reckless use of power, its outcome is a Hobbesian "war of all against all." The threat is bogus, a big lie, but it's repeated endlessly until almost everyone believes it. What's really intended is a plan to serve the interests of giant, powerful corporations whose bottom line depends on big government spending to support them. Those corporations also depend on military muscle when needed to open and secure new markets abroad so they can grow even bigger, more powerful and, above all, more profitable. Our military is used to open those new markets, not protect us from predators. Its called empire building.

George Washington understood it even in his day when he referred to the nation as a "rising empire." He helped build it during the Revolutionary War by his savage treatment of native Indians, all of whom he thought of as subhumans (American Untermenschen). He compared them to wolves and "beasts of prey" and called for their total destruction. And he did it when he sent General John Sullivan and 5,000 troops to attack the noncombatant Onondaga people in 1779 with orders to destroy all their villages, homes, fields, food supplies, cattle herds and orchards. He hoped to kill as many as possible and succeeded. He also stole Indian land including from the Onieda people who aided Washington when he was most in need at Valley Forge. The "Father of our country" and all other leaders who followed him pursued a genocidal assault against our native people that was one of the inspirations and models for Adolph Hitler in designing his own plan to exterminate the Jews, Gypsies, Slavs and other Untermenschen of his day.

Imperialism by its very nature is predatory and brutal. It's a scorched earth, take-no-prisoners strategy to achieve continued economic and geopolitical growth and expansion. It's in the DNA of a capitalist system as the great political economist Harry Magdoff, who died on January 1 at age 92, explained in his 1969 book The Age of Imperialism when he wrote: "Imperialism is not a matter of choice for a capitalist society; it is the way of life of such a society." Historian Henry Steele Commager said it his way when he once wrote that a national security state and its bureaucracy lends its great talents (and resources) "not to devising ways of reducing tensions and avoiding war, but to ways of exacerbating tensions and preparing for war.......For in this Alice-in-Wonderland bureaucratic world you achieve peace through war, order through chaos, security through violence, the reign of law through lawlessness."

And in his unguarded and candid pithy statement, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge also explained it in 1895 when he said "commerce follows the flag." He might have added that the flag also follows commerce. The U.S. had no real enemies then and none since WW II, but all administrations had to convince us we did so they could divert a huge amount of the federal budget to the military and national security. To do it enemies had to be "invented" - the Russians (they were never coming), Saddam (never a threat), North Korea (they've been seeking normalization with us since the late 1980s), and today in Iran (the ayatollahs and elected government also want normalization) and in Venezuela (President Hugo Chavez is a peaceful populist democrat loved by the great majority of his people).

Since WW II, the absence of a real threat has been the greatest threat all U.S. administrations have feared most and had to overcome to pursue their real agenda. When the Soviet Union began disintegrating in the late 80s and finally broke up into 15 independent states at the end of 1991, the first Bush administration was desperate to find a new enemy. They did first with Manuel Noriega, the Panamanian tyrant and former close ally, in late 1989 and then with Saddam, another once close ally, in 1991. Now the war drums are getting louder against Iran and Syria and are also audible against Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. And, of course, an endless war continues against so-called, mostly unnamed "terrorists" as well as the real thing in Iraq and Afghanistan. At a budgeted cost (on and off the books) that likely exceeds $600 billion a year (including the 2 real wars and the national and homeland security costs), business is a big winner, but the public loses and must be convinced otherwise, and future generations have to pay the cost.

The convincing goes on from cradle to grave. From pre-school to the doctoral level, we're taught acceptable doctrine. And our senses are bombarded constantly through the dominant corporate media and their public relations partners as well as the sights and sounds we encounter all around us at work, in our cities and communities, even in our places of worship. There's almost no escape except to venture on our own to discover hidden truths willfully kept from us. But if we're too good at discovery and even better at spreading the "heretical doctrine" of truths that refute the party line, communicating effectively with the greater public, we then risk the power of the state acting to stop us by any means - just like it tries to overthrow leaders of "outlier" nations that dare "go their own way" and forget "who's boss."

 

http://www.populistamerica.com/democracy_in_america__corruption___part_vi

 

The Net Result of Policies Since 1980

The net result of the last 25 years has been a steady, disturbing erosion of the most essential social services people rely on. And it's come at a time when those services are more needed than ever since the Great Depression years. Manufacturing and other higher paying jobs have been exported for years to lower wage countries, and since the 1980s, union membership and worker bargaining power have greatly declined. The result is a nation oriented to services and mostly offering lower paying jobs with fewer or no benefits. One almost unlimited job opportunity is available. It could be promoted with the slogan "join the navy (or army, air force or marines) and see the world" - or at least a certain part of it in the Middle East. Most of those now joining up will never get the benefits they're promised - another deception. Instead, they'll be commodified and consumed on the endless battlefields of Iraq, Afghanistan and other planned conflicts in an insane endless war to "win hearts and minds", "spread democracy", force all others to think and act as we do, and rule the world.

Along with a permanent state of war and garrison state, there's also been a continued transfer of wealth from the poor and middle class to the most well-off through personal and corporate tax cuts (a third of the 275 largest companies paid no federal income tax in at least one year from 2001 - 2003 or got a refund). Corporations have also gotten big corporate welfare subsidies (the public pays for them with our taxes) including huge increases in military spending, which goes to the defense contractors and the many thousands of other companies that receive sub-contracts or sell to the defense related sector. The Center for Defense Information reported that since 1945 over $21 trillion in constant dollars has been spent on the military. Its been done largely to benefit big corporations and fight wars for them, not to defend the nation against real enemies. And its result has been the denial of a fair portion of it being used for vitally needed social services. Unless these policies can be stopped and reversed, essential social benefits will continue to be lost, oppressive corporate power will get stronger, and the gap between rich and poor will become even greater, increasing poverty and destroying the principles this country was founded on of equal opportunity and freedom and justice for all. As former Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis once explained - "We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." Unless we can reinvigorate the democracy Brandeis spoke of, America the beautiful will only exist for the privileged few and no one else.

 

HOW THEY GET AWAY WITH IT

I've long believed the greatest threat to democracy is an uninformed electorate. Unfortunately, that disturbing state clearly characterizes the overall U.S. public that's locked in a prison of its collective mind created by state controlled programming or brainwashing. To control the public, especially when the state is ill-serving it, only techniques of mind control will work. If it's done effectively, the public can be convinced to go along with some of the most audacious policies that go against its own self-interest by a combination of state-induced fear, distraction, consumerism and when the first three fail lockdown.

George Orwell explained that "those who control the present control the past, and those who control the past control the future." It's called programming the public mind or thought control. That's how it worked in Orwell's classic "1984", and it's disturbingly similar today in the U.S. In "1984" Big Brother was watching (through the omnipresent telescreen) to be sure people were "good citizens." Today, Big Brother in the U.S. is "Uncle Sam" watching to keep us in line and using the Orwellian techniques of "newspeak", "doublethink" and "beat em up and lock em up" when the propaganda message is misunderstood, ignored or resisted. It worked in the fictional "1984", and it works well most often for most of us in the real but often surreal-like world right here, but more subtly except when things get rough.

 

Please do, and also look up how they started out...

also please look up:

unitary executive power
military commissions act 2006
habeas corpus
patriot acts I and II
extraordinary rendition
waterboarding
signing statements
Fuhrerprinzip
perpetual war

1 + 1 = 2 if i'm not mistaken.

How would you define an emerging fascist state?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism

 

In this provocative, scattershot jeremiad, cultural historian Berman (The Twilight of American Culture) likens America to ancient Rome on the brink. On the geopolitical plane, he contends, the United States is a belligerent, overstretched empire, saddled with huge deficits and a hollowed-out economy, vulnerable to terrorist blowback and, worse, collapse if foreign creditors finally pull the plug. The rot is cultural and spiritual, too: Americans are cold, alienated shopaholics immured in suburban anomie, each encased in a private bubble of iTunes and media noise and indifferent to the public good. Culprits include globalization, technology and, more fundamentally, the individualism and commercialism that is the bedrock of American identity. Because American civilization is a 'package deal,' the author considers it impervious to piecemeal reform and, given Americans' ingrained 'stupidity' and willful blindness, unsalvageable. Berman's attempts to tie every American dysfunction to an all-encompassing sickness of soul overreaches, leading him to lump together serious issues like poverty and the Abu Ghraib outrages with trivialities like annoying cell phone yakkers or the 'freedom fries' phenomenon, which he bemoans as 'symbolic of an emptiness at the core.' Often stimulating and insightful in its particulars, his indictment, like the jingoism it abhors, is too sweeping and essentialist to fully capture American reality

 

http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?inkey=74-0393058662-0


Guy, why are you still not providing sources?
Are you trying to take credit for someone else's work or are you just too lazy to provide links?

 

Yes, they start out as democracies. So therefore a democracy looks like an emerging fascist state.

Sorry, the story is a bit old. Apparently America has been becoming fascists since forever, yet never seems to get there. The press is still free, we still vote, we still have freedom of assembly and religion, freedom of movement... it doesn't look much like an emerging fascist state to me.

You should read up a little more on these cases. I mean "habeus corpus" - care to elaborate? Or did you think there has been no ebb and flow of civil liberties throughout american history - this is an unprecedented point in time when a president ever changed a law dealing with civil liberties?