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San Francisco, 10:53 AM
Sat Nov 28
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08/04/09
you already bombed the japanese, so why its 100% sure that it wont happen to you??? if iran and north corea launch EVERY missil they have they could seriously damage you guys....of course you could throw all the bombs you want also, but that wont change your own destruction....
perhaps its a taboo topic???? perhaps USA wont divide by states, but would that matter if the most important cities are destroyed??? the american dream would have finally been awaked
pd: i dont want this to happen :)
08/04/09
The USSR had thousands of nuclear missiles, as does the US. Iran and NK are nowhere near the scale of threat that the USSR was, nor are they likely to be in the forseeable future.
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as human nature goes all empires RISE and FALL.
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Srsly, give me prescription coverage and a box of Timbits and I'm yours.
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I couldn't resist.
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@J_Frank_Parnell
Totally agree on this comment. The reasoning given in the article fails to ID a few exogenous natural events and at least one critical historic precedent. Rome failed as a result of massive moral, political and cultural decay from within. Rome imploded under the weight of is own decadence. Corruption was not causal. It was an effect.
In the US, it will be our entitlement culture... our increasingly amoral desires... our increasing prioritization of the individual as more important than the community... our increasing disdain for the foundations, principles, and Godly reverence that this nation and its founders originally held dear...
We are increasingly a solipsistic nation with very short-term memory. When an ideal or set of ideals (say the Ten Commandments) which has governed us well for hundreds of years (and others for thousands of years) conflicts with our desire and "so-called right" to seek pleasures, we throw out the commandments rather than modify our ways.
We have forgotten that Freedoms are nor free and we are not entitled to them. They are earned and shared, and lest we forget, scores and scores of men and women were enslaved, fought and died on this American soil so that we could live in this freedom we hold dear. Freedom is a sacrifice for the greater good. For the future. It is not something to be consumed lightly or discarded easily on our daily lusts.
We really need a return to principles that informed the writings etched on courtroom walls across the country, and printed on our money, and espoused by George Washington. We need to do so before the ACLU finally removes what has been in place for hundreds of years. Otherwise we will escalate and repeat the mistakes of the past, but without the moral fortitude to make the right and most forward looking decisions of the kind for which we now celebrate leaders like Abraham Lincoln.
08/04/09
Instead, I'll just point and laugh.
08/04/09
you dont see the moral decay probably because you are part of the problem he is talking about
08/04/09
Oh, and when it poked at Persia one too many times. That helped too. But there's no correlation between moral turpitude and imperial stability. That applies to lots of empires, not just Rome.
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08/05/09
Thankyou.
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i'm fairly certain you meant to say 'the Master'
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08/04/09
Good thing unpaid citizen journalism will have our backs on that one.
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08/04/09
1. The Yellowstone super volcano erupts, spewing out billions of tons of pulverized glass (so-called "ash") that destroys more than half the infrastructure of the United States.
2. The "big one," the much-anticipated super-sized catastrophic earthquake strikes California, breaking much of the West Coast off into the ocean, thereby creating economic collapse.
3. Some piss-ant radical group launches an EMP-enhanced nuclear warhead from a cargo ship in the Atlantic and detonates it at 150-miles above the U.S., frying every electronic device. In the first 30 days tens of millions die from lack of food, water, sanitation, and heat, and the U.S. economy is destroyed for generations.
4. Sarah Palin gets elected President in 2012, thereby sending the country into a tailspin of stupidity, oppression, and economic collapse as the rich get richer and everyone else gets owned by China and Saudi Arabia.
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08/04/09
In Canada, it is very much a polar opposite. People define themselves by their provincial entity or city of residence, and then as a Canadian. Although, I guess this also explains why this country's federal government is so weak, our leaders are so discordant, and why parties like the Bloc Quebecois exist. If the Conservatives ever decisively lose power, I think a true Alberta separatist party will rise.
08/04/09
I think there are plenty of people in the US who define themselves by their locality. The immediacy of one's surroundings makes them easier to conceptualize after all. This is more true of certain places than others. Obviously, New Yorkers or Chicagoans or San Franciscans are famous for their city loyalties, and it may be the case that they think of themselves primarily as citizens of their cities. Or consider Texans. Texans are famous (or infamous) for the amount of pride/arrogance they display regarding their state. They have a tendency to fly Texas flags where-ever they go, they have special "Texas Native" license plates, they have their own fast-food chains, and "Texas history" is a reasonably important element of primary-school education.
HOWEVER -- The ubiquity of the national myth ('myth' being used here to denote emotional impact, not falsehood) cannot be denied. Everybody in the country knows (or was at least informed) about the national heroes: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, et al. Kids dress up as them in school plays or color pictures of them at a young age, despite they fact that they're from Virginia or Massachusetts or where-ever. Even certain "local" heroes, like Sam Houston or Davy Crockett in the case of Texas, become national heroes through personal exploits as well as hype and pop-culture. Indeed, Sam Houston and Davy Crockett are as much Tennessee's heroes as they are Texas', since they were both Tennesseans. The American Flag, the most obvious symbol of national unity, is ubiquitous. It flies over schools, post-offices, and used-car dealerships. We sing to it at sporting events. It easily becomes identified with notions of "home." Most Americans know that the flag has fifty stars, and each star represents a state. I am about to argue, with no real evidence, that it serves as a reminder of the unity of the nation every time one looks at it.
My point, after that wall of text, is that despite whatever regional tensions might exist, I find it hard to believe that a region would find itself alienated not only from the government, but the idea of America to such a degree that it would seek independence. I know that it happened before, but if nothing else the American Civil War created a rather intriguing grammatical shift: No longer would one say "The United States are," but "The United States is."
...did that inform anyone at all? I think I started to wander around a bit.
Edit -- This may sound a bit too much like "American Exceptionalism." I don't want to say that the United States would never fracture or collapse, I just don't see something like that happening due to something as mundane as high cost of transportation.
08/04/09
But somehow we all seem to agree on one thing: We all hate Toronto! I kid. I kid because I love. (Though some people you talk to ... sheesh!)
08/04/09
In some ways, I think having regional differences is a good thing; you know, multiculturalism and celebration of diversity and all that. But when an individual region's politicians take over and try to impose their methods on the rest of the country; the way that the Conservatives seem to be trying to do (or the way that the Bloc had substantially more seats than the federal NDP despite getting a much lower percentage of the vote in the last election)... well, that's where our system fails.
08/05/09
The party took over the rights of the inactive Alberta First Party in June 2004 and changed the party name. The party fielded 12 candidates in the provincial election, held on November 22, 2004.
These candidates won a total of 4,680 votes, or 0.5% of the popular vote in the province.
Yep, their a real threat all right.
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08/04/09
Oh sure, all the different groups of states will say that they can still be friends but in the end they'll grow distant due to the awkwardness. Especially when the southwest comes back to introduce it's new boyfriend Mexico.
08/04/09
Basicaly friendly = "not at war"
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ZOMBPOCOLYPSE™
08/04/09