You mentioned how America appears to an outsiders eyes. I think to mine we as a society are very sick right now-and I am NOT religious, I merely try to be virtuous, failing often.
Ive read about how the soviets, despite living amongst some of the most fertile land on earth could not even feed themselves. And when a calf was sick and crying all night, it was left to die-why bother? You dont get any benefit from helping, and so would be a fool to do so. It turned ethics and morality on its head. As you state the Good Samaritan can not exist in this state.
Theres NOTHING virtuous about destroying the institutions of society (family, etc) and the state ripping initiative from the minds of people in order to assure a supplicant culture of the entitled, disaffected, and dependent. That is what the left is doing here, case in point the war on poverty and its resultant welfare state. And it was done for votes.
The same lefties teach children everyday how bad Americans are throughout history (we are histories bad guy), without context. In college its stepped up. Our universities should be about the free discussion of ideas, but instead are merely a pulpit and a means to sanction the right.
And our media paints a biased picture intended to elicit an emotional response, one that paints the left as good, and the right as evil. The left denies this even happens or suggests its equivocation (fox news!!!!!)
And then hollywood blasts presents warped views of morality, always wrapped in a shiny-cool wrapper. That guy MUST be right because he's cool and hip and gets the ladies. Conservatives are irrational, and mean. Its all about feelings.
One can hardly wonder why at the end of this onslaught "joe six pack" is left angry, resentful, and frustrated. And THATS where the left lives, like a jealous kid who didn't get as much candy on Halloween-there to rectify things-just vote democrat. They will be your family. They will be your God.
The decay of this nation has been something to behold, and its come from within. China and India dont yet hate themselves, it will be interesting to see where they are in 50 years. Like I said, we are quite sick.
Most of that I agree with, but in perspective, it was the opposite when the circumstances of my parentage allowed me a first class American education, from fifth grade on we learned about the Bill of Rights, how the land was "discovered" and the west was "won", a highly skewed John Wayne version of events. But, they taught us too well, when guys like me started asking where was the constitutionality of forcing people into slavery called military service when they have no right to vote they started handing out detentions, which was really stupid because that only annealed our resolve, just as lobbing tear gas did.
We became a questioning society and were branded all sorts of ****, "hippies", "yippies", "long hairs", "queers" and of course "lefty pinkos"...
I watched the film "Joe" not too long ago, with Easy Rider and Kent State thrown in you get the idea.
What we really were was defenders of the constitution and the right to live free. we were the embodiment of Vermont's license plate "Live Free or Die". And we seriously questioned the John Wayne Story, especially after the Pentagon Papers were published, a copy of which lies on my desk to this day, a reminder that anything any government says is suspect and when it comes to war, a probable lie.
We found out that America wasn't "discovered" after all, a guy named Lief Erikson beat him too it and old Chris from which much of the US get its name was 12,000 miles off course and nowhere near where he said he was, resulting in the native being misnamed as "Indians" when India is half a world away.
We learned that the west was not "won" but ****ing stolen, and that the last righteous war, a legitimate case of defense and liberation of many various peoples was probably the last righteous war and that when the bullets start flying, truth starts dying.
All that was righteous and reasoned, truth in fact. A truth Nixon had to face. But it was not learned. I suspect because that naive push back caused by irrational high school detentions was hijacked by agenda-fed idealogues from the far left to the dark and violent, we had our "mojo" ripped off by the likes of clown acts like the Symbianese Liberation Army and some morons who think a brainless and failed philosophy requiring all things to be surrendered to the state is the road to utopia. But, they are not the "left" of my generation who got their heads beat revealing that anything government cannot on its own be trusted; they will lie, cheat, steal, beat, jail and ultimately kill if they have to.
Today, the "left" are a bunch of has-beens wallowing in slogans and fighting ancient fights like higher minimum wage and free money called "assistance" while wiping their asses with what was once the finest legal document in the known universe, the United States Constitution. They have no concept of "rights" as individuals but surrender all such identity in a clamoring mob whose main tool is shouting down any and all opponents and turning their leaders into demons or, in the tragic case of the great demon Sarah Palin, "sluts", "bimbos", and "whores", while going into hysterics over the fact she actually has a family that is still together and actually talks to one another. Shame.
The result is what I post almost daily, the nation reels in cheap, tawdry, ineffective ideological image making while the real issues, crime, break down of family, drugs, school drop outs, the real problems get completely ignored.
In the real world, a misfit country like Canada should be the one with the problems, ****, 30% of the population aren't even signatories to the constitution, half of them have been threatening to quit for four decades and our political system appoints members of the Senate, they aren't even elected. The United States, as I NEVER tired of pointing out has faced and beaten every obstacle it has faced and they have been mightier than almost every nation. Born out of war against the mightiest power on earth, faced them again later to a draw, fought the deadliest civil war in history. When you remove the moral judgments, which are worthy of discussions, the US is indestructible...at least from the outside.
The problems you face can be solved, but not when there is a wall running down the middle of the country that would dwarf the Berlin wall....a wall in my opinion the left in America need to stay powerful for as soon as true "liberal" thinking arrives, both left and right have to open their close minds and ask if there isn 't merit in what they thought had none before. And while I repeat, the American left and I have little in common politically, I suggest the right is more capable of thinking "parachute mind", as in it only works if its open.