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I'm not insulting your intelligence (or Noam's, either), my good man. I just think that you are wrong and the idea that each country's values are beautiful and special in their own way like a snowflake is a facile dodge to avoid hard truths.
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2. The ideas on which we have based our society, and our government, and those of similar nations, are superior to those of backward cesspools like Saudi Arabia, Syria, most of the kleptocracies of Africa, and Russia.
It is inarguable that, if your country has a national religion, or a set of laws based on the texts of some religion (earnestly or just to keep people down, as in SA), it is a notably unexceptional country in comparison to all secular ones.
All that said, of course, we're backsliding quite dramatically. Though our notions that freedom and individual dignity are paramount remain, in practice, we're turning into a ugly, paranoid, and openly classist society where a few keep almost all of the rest under the knuckles of ignorance, diversion and, where necessary, police tyranny.
We're great in theory, shit in terms of the quality of US born citizens inhabiting us, from top to bottom.
