a couple of other points:
- US as the 'greatest nation on earth'....you're gonna have to define that more specifically, sweetie. Do you mean US as teh greatest nation in terms of contributions to capitalism, to technology (in the 20th century, mostly), and to pioneering the idea of democracy and elections? If so, i agree. Do you mean GREATEST in terms of US as the morally upright, valient savior of the world for the side of goodness and the side of GOD? Im gonna have to call you bullshit on that. Unless we;re talking certain, specific events - like WW1 or 2, Korean War, Guf War, etc - the US has committed many attrocities and crimes that are very rarely heard or talked about among schoo textbooks. Presidents from the liberal LBJ to the conservative RR have done things that have really really hurt other nations.
- conservatives and americans often espouse the 'work hard to succeed in life' kind of Puritanistic (?) values as found in Benj Franklins 'Almanac', and that is actually one of the greatest and most admirable attributes coming out of the US. But I am just as likely to call out its flaws and limitations as I am to support and embrace it. Namely, this libertarian and conservative philosophy has made them ingrained to accept among ohter things - racism and sexism, etc. When you say 'The homeless are lazy' as a rule, when you say 'the poor have a choice to get themselves out of their rut by hard work', then this often translates not just to class ignorance, but to racist and sexist dimensions. Example, what is the solution to so much of US black's poverty? If your response is, 'Decrease social programs of assistance, and increase their motivations to work hard to succeed in life,' what your basically saying is, 'The reason they are poor is because they are lazy and willfully dumb, and they lack the work ethics that we whites (or asians, as I sometimes hear) have.' It is by definition a deliberate denial that systematic, unspoken, and embedded racism exists, and that I have a huge problem. And this includes gender too (many of the really lower class are women or single mothers as well.)
This is why the liberals and those sociologists have their pros and cons: Their pros is they question things that libertarians seem to deny is happening. Their cons - although this depends on your POV - is that what they propose may be too wasteful or inefficient, especially if all they propose as a solution is more govt programs.
Thats why I sometimes disagree with liberals who say the answer to all this embedded discrimination and inequality is purely more govt programs of assistance. But at the least, they recognize there is a problem. Unlike many conservatives, who simply deny the problem, or ridicule the victims.
