Jack F. Twist > writes:

> America leads the world in only four things these days: murder
> rates, prison population rates, capital punishment rates and
> military adventurism. Even in GDP per capita we're currently
> sixth in the world:
> http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/.../2004rank.html


Murder obviously aside (I'll come back to that in a moment), what's
wrong with any of those things?

Prison population rates? Yeah, so? I take it you'd rather have
those criminals out on the streets? I realize that liberals are
known for coddling criminals, but that's just silly. (I'm reminded
of the infamous "Treason Times" story about how the crime rate was
dropping, but the prisons [inexplicably] kept filling.)

Capital punishment rates? You say that like it's a bad thing. I'm
*for* capital punishment. Strap 'em and zap 'em, I say, and then
stack the bodies like cordwood. Introduce 'em to Joltin' Josie,
and let 'em "ride the lightning."

Military adventurism? The term is morally neutral in itself. And
I'd say the U.S. had (and has) perfectly valid and defensible reasons
for engaging in what you describe as "adventurism." (Oh, and by the
bye, you liberals didn't seem terribly upset when Clinton intervened
in Kosovo. Funny, that...)

("Adventurism?" That word sounds like an old Red Chinese polemic,
doesn't it? Something along the lines of "Khruschevian adventurers,"
or my personal fave, "running dogs of revisionism." Ah, well; I
suppose it was Mao or never...)

So back to murder rates. As someone else pointed out, I suspect
we're beaten by at least a handful of other nations in that respect.
I'm not terribly concerned about it, at any rate (heh).

But the question stands: Why do you despise your own country so much
that you're so determined to dig up such information, accurate or not?




Geoff

--
"They shouldn't get any new nuclear weapons until
they've used the ones they've got." -- Murff