America is the Best, Most Free, and Most Prosperous Country on Earth: Change My Mind

[98cwitr]

It used to. Now it means this:

"We repeat and again reaffirm that neither a State nor the Federal Government can constitutionally force a person "to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion." Neither can constitutionally pass laws or impose requirements which aid all religions as against non-believers, and neither can aid those religions based on a belief in the existence of God as against those religions founded on different beliefs"

--Torcaso v. Watkins (1961)​

And hence we witness our downfall. How many examples do we need of nations forsaking the LORD and then failing utterly and completely before we realize we are subject to Him?

 

[Speedwell]

And hence we witness our downfall. How many examples do we need of nations forsaking the LORD and then failing utterly and completely before we realize we are subject to Him?

Phooey. You're playing a losing hand and I think you know it. Let me give you an example: I like to tell horror stories of my time in the Bible Belt and one of them is that the only Catholic church in town was a shabby little chapel on the outskirts for Mexican farm workers and a white man seen going in there would be "spoke to" afterwards. But that was thirty years ago. Now that same town as a Catholic church on main street that any one can go to and I hear that there is an Episcopal Church as well, if you can imagine such a thing.

I think that is why there is so much slavish devotion to Trump. He really is your last chance.

 

[98cwitr]

Phooey. You're playing a losing hand and I think you know it. Let me give you an example: I like to tell horror stories of my time in the Bible Belt and one of them is that the only Catholic church in town was a shabby little chapel on the outskirts for Mexican farm workers and a white man seen going in there would be "spoke to" afterwards. But that was thirty years ago. Now that same town as a Catholic church on main street that any one can go to and I hear that there is an Episcopal Church as well, if you can imagine such a thing.

I think that is why there is so much slavish devotion to Trump. He really is your last chance.

Churches going up is a good thing, but understand the context of my statement is involving the governing bodies.

 

[Speedwell]

Churches going up is a good thing, but understand the context of my statement is involving the governing bodies.

It has to do with privileging your religion. My point was that other religions are moving in on you and you really can't do anything about it in the long run, even with government help.

 

[98cwitr]

It has to do with privileging your religion. My point was that other religions are moving in on you and you really can't do anything about it in the long run, even with government help.

Very true. I do fully believe truth and love win in the end though. It's all in God's hands regardless. What I witness is Providence uses evil to fight off evil. The house is already divided.

 

[Speedwell]

Very true. I do fully believe truth and love win in the end though. It's all in God's hands regardless. What I witness is Providence uses evil to fight off evil. The house is already divided.

And you think it will help if the government adopts a kind of crypto-Protestant religiosity but frankly, I don't see it doing any good.

 

[98cwitr]

And you think it will help if the government adopts a kind of crypto-Protestant religiosity but frankly, I don't see it doing any good.

Not necessarily. I think it limited to simply the government acknowledging they are subject to God and therefore their job is to protect inalienable rights rather than granting them would suffice for me; as our Founding Fathers did.

 

[Speedwell]

Not necessarily. I think it limited to simply the government acknowledging they are subject to God and therefore their job is to protect inalienable rights rather than granting them would suffice for me; as our Founding Fathers did.

I don't think anybody believes that the government "grants" what the Founders called inalienable rights. Those rights were articulated as independent of government and the government charged with protecting them.

 

[98cwitr]

I don't think anybody believes that the government "grants" what the Founders called inalienable rights. Those rights were articulated as independent of government and the government charged with protecting them.

I think Beto and Buttigeg would need to be asked that explicitly. I think they think they do.

 

[Speedwell]

I think Beto and Buttigeg would need to be asked that explicitly. I think they think they do.

I don't know how you arrive at that conclusion, but it makes no difference. Many people don't clearly understand our system of government, including one sitting President I can think of. I was particularly referring to the parties of this discussion.

 

[TheNorwegian]

Are those criminal gangs mostly comprised of immigrants?

My objection was that someone called it "terrorism", while the correct label is "criminal"

I do not know in detail where those criminal gangs originate. But for what I hear most of them are born in Sweden. How is this in the US? Is criminality more connected to certain groups - or is it evenly distributed across ethnicity and country of origin?

 

[rjs330]

My objection was that someone called it "terrorism", while the correct label is "criminal"

I do not know in detail where those criminal gangs originate. But for what I hear most of them are born in Sweden. How is this in the US? Is criminality more connected to certain groups - or is it evenly distributed across ethnicity and country of origin?

Well whites here commit most of the crime. If you are talking percentage of crime as far as proprtionate rates, Blacks proportionately commit more crime per capita. Gangs here are of all races. With some of the most violent being Mexican gangs. Places like Chicago which have very high homicide rates are primarily associated with gang violence with gangs killing each other and having Innocents caught in the crossfire.

 

[TheNorwegian]

Well whites here commit most of the crime.

I think it is safe to assume that most criminality in Sweden and the rest of Scandinavia is committed by white people as well

 

[Daniel C]

As I was told this was a debatable topic, I figured I'd post here to let the debate ensue.

Definitions:

Best: most productive of good : offering or producing the greatest advantage, utility, or satisfaction

Free: enjoying personal freedom : not subject to the control or domination of another

Prosperous: marked by success or economic well-being

I have to be honest and say I actually agree,even as a non-American.

The UK can't compete as a military force,economic power or most importantly individual rights. And I don't think any other nation can either.

 

[Nihilist Virus]

America is #1 in obesity and prison population per capita.

 

[rjs330]

America is #1 in obesity and prison population per capita.

That's because of our abundance, which shows how great this country is. We have an overabundance of things. Obesity shows lack of self control combined with the abundance.

I think prison population also shows a lack of self control is some fashion. If we legalized drugs we would have fewer people in jail.

Why does a higher prison population make us worse? Because we hold more people accountable for their actions?

 

[Go Braves]

On Twitter this afternoon in the context of discussing the school shooting in Santa Clarita this morning I shared a video from a dance session where I was working on the choreography for a quickly-organized fundraising event held for the victims of a previous mass shooting. One of my friends from Australia asked me which mass shooting in America was that dance for, which was a simple question and yet one so tragically profound. We've had so many it wasn't a matter of it being the shooting where innocent lives were stolen, but asking which one, of which year. I'm a bit of late bloomer because of medicine I took throughout my childhood that slowed my growth so I was a little shorter in the video that I am now, and the friend realized it must have been taken the past, guessing Las Vegas. There was also the Sutherland Springs Church shooting that year where 26 were murdered. In 2018 there were the school shootings at Parkland (17 dead) and Sante Fe (10), the Pittsburgh Synagogue shooting, then Borderline. Then this year......... Americans are slaughtered in their houses of worship, in their schools, at music festivals and food festivals, and yoga studios, and Walmarts, and bars, and their workplaces, in movie theaters.

Last week I flew back home to LA for a memorial service marking the one year anniversary of the shooting at the Borderline Bar and Grill on their College Night. A lot of the Pepperdine and Cal Lutheran students who were there that night are friends from my HS youth group at our church. It was an extraordinarily traumatic time. They experienced a shooting, watched friends die before their eyes. Then while still gripped by shock had to endure devastating and terrifying wildfires that savagely ripped through the community. This year Santa Clarita has had to endure hellacious fires, and then as soon as they ended and they could take their breath, there was a school shooting. And now this weekend there's another fire danger for the area.

In early February of last year I was running while listening to podcast and had to stop and cry because of a story about a 7-year-old girl in South Carolina who was severely traumatized after a shooting at her school she couldn't live her childhood with joy. She developed a nervous tic of pulling out her eyelashes, she couldn't sleep without being terrorized by nightmares, she had to be homeschooled. That tragedy doesn't even count as a "mass shooting" because it was just one person who died when a 14-year-old drove up to the playground, pulled out a gun, and began randomly shooting. Three were shot. In America a mass shooting is generally defined as when four or more unrelated people are killed. The smallest child in the girl's class, a six-year-old boy who was her friend, died from his wounds. The most attention was given to that shooting because of his love of superheroes and how everyone came to his funeral dressed in a costume to honor him. The girl wrote a letter to Donald and Melania Trump, explaining that she hated guns, it took her best friend from her and it ruined her life. To her surprise, she did receive a response. Her elation wore off a few days later when she realized that he never told her how he planned to keep kids safe at school, as she'd asked him to do. So she wrote him again. "Thoughts and prayers." I listened to this one week before Valentine's Day, 2018. The day of the Parkland shooting.

Please keep kids safe from guns’: How Trump replied to a 7-year-old’s anguished letter

And I mean yes, I know that guns aren't the only way people are murdered in America. A Neo-Nazi stabbed a friend of mine to death at the beginning of last year. A sweet boy crushing it at an Ivy League, whole life ahead of him, taken by a fellow classmate. But guns are the weapon of choice for massacring many people in a mere amount of time.

5 dead, including 3 children, in San Diego shooting

This needs to stop happening in America.

There's just been another mass shooting in America. In Fresno, California.

Family and friends were gathered in a backyard on a Sunday afternoon to enjoy watching a football together when a gunman came up and began shooting. Four people were shot dead, and six were wounded. There is now known indication at this time that the suspect knew the victims.

Since your posts there's been 2 mass shootings at military bases in America. There was one in New Orleans. Today there's a mass shooting in NJ. Heartbreaking.

 

[Radagast]

Prosperous: marked by success or economic well-being

In terms of GDP per capita, countries more prosperous than the US include Qatar, Luxembourg, Singapore, Norway, Ireland, and Switzerland, among others.