Originally Posted by DArtagnan
I get this whole paranoia anti-government thing, and though it IS ludicrous (even if we're talking the US) - I understand the nature of that fear.

But what I don't understand is how you can be so damned proud of your nation at the same time.

It's like you're stuck in pre-school where they fed you the constitution and you think you're still living with Lincoln and Washington.

It's amazing, really

Indeed, why can't we be civilized? We could plummet the globe into two world wars. We could do a little modern day genocide. Twice. We could run our country to fiscal ruin (see, we're trying to follow your footsteps) and then burn the country to the ground when the bills finally came due. We could regulate cucumber bow. We could basically outsource our defense to another nation, and then complain about it constantly. We could pontificate about redneck racists while treating our own (the Roma, in case you weren't sure) even worse. Do I need to continue, oh wise ones?

Indeed.