"Martin Hotze" wrote in message
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| Well, socialism by its _ideals_ is not that bad, the idea itself is good.
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Socialism is nothing but organized banditry. It is a terrible concept.

| Unfortunately, the Europeans
| cannot be entrusted to not hurl nuclear weapons at each other, so the
| presence of our troops will be necessary for a long time to come.
|
| and you still want to have some of the European countries share your ideas
| within NATO? Or: if this is your mindset, than you have a really bad
mindset.
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| 3 questions:
| do you have a passport?
| can you point at Europe on a globe?
| have you ever been outside of your county/state/USA?
|

Yes to all three, if it is any of your business.

The express purpose of NATO is to keep Europeans from indulging in their
penchant for slaughtering one another by ensuring that an attack on one is
deemed an attack on all. Despite this, most of the NATO members have
consistently refused to honor their NATO commitments, including their
obligations incurred by the last attacks by terrorist groups. Italy, for
example, still protects terrorists that are wanted in Turkey.

NATO would not function at all without the presence of US peacekeeping
troops to keep a lid on things. The United States in many ways served the
same function in keeping the peace in western Europe as the Soviet Union did
in the east. Now that Russia is no longer able to fulfill its obligations
there, the US has had to intervene in much of eastern Europe as well, even
in some of the former Soviet republics.

Your comments about America's "youth" and your unfounded assumptions of my
own lack of exposure to European culture reflect the typical European
ignorance of American history and culture that I previously condemned.
America is not 200 years old; it is a blend of cultures at least as old as
anything Europe has to offer. The United States as a national political
entity is older than Germany, Poland, and several other European nations.
Great Britain might reasonably claim to be older than the United States, but
the other European countries are little older than WW II, built on the ashes
of earlier entities that have little in common in either boundaries or
culture other than name.

Even allowing that post-war France is somewhat the same country is pre-war
France and giving the French some claim to being an older country, most
other European nations did not come into existence before Napoleon. Before
that, most of Europe was nothing but a collection of tiny feudal estates
ruled by petty overlords whose chief form of recreation seems to have been
burning down other feudal estates.

But let us not forget Spain and Portugal, who might really have legitimate
claims to being old. Oh, too late, the rest of Europe did forget about them
and continues to ignore them to this day. I dare say that those two
countries find far more respect in America than they do anywhere in Europe.
You would do well to remember why the Europeans who came to America did so
in the first place, and the heritage they brought with them.

Even if European culture really was older than that of the US, you fail to
demonstrate how it is somehow 'better.' Little enough of that ancient
European culture remains -- mostly reverently preserved in museums. France
of 2003, for example, has almost nothing in common with the empire of
Charlemagne. The language, people, customs, architecture, art, music,
political institutions, and everything else in modern Europe would probably
be completely unrecognizable and horrify the benighted barbarians you so
proudly claim as your heritage. Only the violence remains. The modern
European has nothing more to do with castles and Stonehenge than the modern
American has to do with Chichen Itza or ancient cliff dwellers of the
southwest. You want to rest on the laurels of the long vanished tribes of
1000 years ago, go right ahead.

And don't even get me started on the supposedly ancient nations of Asia and
Africa.