"1) The inception of large-scale democracy - Although many nations historically contributed to the rise of government by the people (The city-state of Athens, The British Empire,) the USA was the first major nation to be founded from the outset in democratic principles, and to maintain them more or less intact on a global scale. Democratic principles that were laid down in the American Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights, and Constitution were used time and again as models for other nations that were considering reforms or building a new government after the collapse of the "Ancien Regime". Even if democracy and human rights sometimes play second fiddle to maintaining the American world hegemony in the eyes of the US government, it is still something very important to the actual citizenry, and the occasional callous disregard of this has caused many a politican to fall from grace in the eyes of the public, after which they're voted out. Yay democracy!"

Thats a bit of an artificial measure, it has far to many qualifiers in it. The 'first' 'major' nation to be founded from the 'outset' on democratic principles. Why is that nay better than a small country who had a revolution and became a democracy?

Also, America hasnt really managed to uphold it globally, paticularly during the cold war.

Pretty sure a lot of US citizens support the actions of the US government when they do those things.....


2) Charitable giving - Americans consistently rank very highly in comparisons of charitable giving. The USA isn't currently on the top of the chart in terms of total amount given relative to GDP, but it exceeds the second place contender (France) for total amount given for global charitable aid by almost 100%, coming in at about 26 billion USD yearly. Privately, American citizens donate over 400 billion USD every year to charitable causes. The USA has also played a leading role in the formation and continuation of institutions such as the Red Cross and the United Nations that perform vital functions in mitigating the famines and tsunamis and epidemics that afflict the world. Yay charity!

The 'total' amount given is meaningless, the USA has over 3 times frances population so is easily going to have a larger total contribution.

The US may be a big leader in the UN and solving the worlds problems....but its also responsible for causing many of them.

why is every post here a long one i will make mine short Americans are more bad than good and your economy is screwed.also nobody gives a hoot about atletics it dosen't make the world go round or save live,.did athletics stop hitler.

Yup. Whenever the UN wants to do something, like stopping the war in Syria (A hundred people die there each day!), the US uses his veto to stop it, even when all other countries vote in favor.

|> why is every post here a long one i will make mine short Americans are more bad than good and your economy is screwed.

We make long posts so we can be careful about what we're saying. So that in your posts for instance, we could replace "Americans" with "American politicians" or "US foreign affairs policy" and not have to (largely unjustly) judge 300 million people.

|> also nobody gives a hoot about atletics it dosen't make the world go round or save live,.did athletics stop hitler.

Judging by the amount of money spend on the Olympic Games every four years (or every two years actually: Winter Games) and Super Bowl commercials (to just name a semi-random example) "nobody gives a hoot about atletics" is simply not true.

Stop the Godwin-timer at post number 42. How terribly geeky...

Anyway, the Berlin Olympics caused, albeit indirectly, a major part of "making the world go round" - it got turned into a huge political show. Same with the Olympics in the USSR (boycotted by the USA) and in the USA (boycotted by the USSR).

Looking at it another way, athletic events let people indulge their nationalistic needs without anyone getting killed, so that's good.

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|> Whenever the UN wants to do something, like stopping the war in Syria (A hundred people die there each day!), the US uses his veto to stop it, even when all other countries vote in favor.

In all fairness, it's not like Russia never uses their veto... (That of course doesn't make it okay for the USA to (ab)use their veto too.)

Rvw i never said all americans are bad i said americans are more bad than good also athletics maybe good for some people but it dosen't save lives.academics and scholars should be invested in more.

I know about Russia, that's why I'm against the veto in general. Why should the opinions of 1 (or 10) countries count above those of the 186 others?

Iron Conquerer.... Where are you from.

I disagree with your statement that americans are more bad than good 100%.

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We have a welfare system, and in most major cities they won't let you die in the middle of the street because of health care issues. They will, unfortunately, stick you with an amazingly large health care bill.

$270 US dollars may not be a large amount to the states, but what is the buying power of that in Thailand? There's a large difference. And to be honest I've had friends who have been in China/the outlaying countries and when a major health care issue has arisen they have opted to return to the states and receive medical attention.

i live in britain with free health care

|> I know about Russia, that's why I'm against the veto in general. Why should the opinions of 1 (or 10) countries count above those of the 186 others?

Because "the big powers" would never have joined the UN if they wouldn't have been allowed a veto. Yeah, pretty crappy reason, I know, but to the best of my knowledge, that is the actual reason...

"Why should the opinions of 1 (or 10) countries count above those of the 186 others?"

Moros, it all depends. If those 1 or 10 countries will be the ones funding the efforts, both in terms of dollars and lives... well then they deserve to have their vote count above the rest.

"And to be honest I've had friends who have been in China/the outlaying countries and when a major health care issue has arisen they have opted to return to the states and receive medical attention."

My buddy has lived and worked in China for the past 5 years. He has all his doctors appointments setup for the few weeks he is back here in the states and plans on returning to have kids since he doesn't trust the doctors and the ancient ways they still use. (His parents are from China so it's not like its racism related or whatnot)

Also I'd like to point out that with the rare exception with schools in England, such as Cambridge/Oxford that college/graduate students decide to come to USA institutions instead of other countries schools.

While I imagine its rare that a student goes abroad for college, I think its worth noting that America is mainly where they come. So we must be doing something right with our educational system, at least at the collegiate/graduate level.

bostonbruins are u trying to make me proud of country am not living in or from.
yes we know you are proud.am not going to try and say my opinions and also a lot of unicorns come to my country to play and graze our countryside must be doing something right.

boston where is your proof on what you said so students might go to american how many is a lot is it 100 and what about stats of other country abroad student.
and also it isn't rare for students to study abroad.

I think this will be my last post in this thread.... I fear continuing this will lead to some sort of flame war.

I don't much mind what you take pride in. If you take pride in your country or not, that is entirely up to you. Though, these unicorns you speak of, where do I find them?

My use of the England schools was just an example of schools that are outside of the US but still people come from all over the world. There are other well regarded schools that I did not mention as well.

Study abroad for a semester isn't uncommon. Students come to the schools I've mentioned as full time students. Not as an american may go to Australia, Spain, or Ireland for a semester for the experience of being in that country instead of solely the academics.

I went to a small liberal arts college. We had over a 100 international students. Something like 10% of the student body. I imagine this is common at well regarded american schools. I don't have any hard stats to put forth, I could very possibly be mistaken. Though I think the fact that students from all over try to come here to go to school, does say something.

FWIW - I don't intend to rub anyone the wrong way, if something I've said has caused insult/harm please don't take it that way. My comments and thoughts are simply my own, and I do take pride in my country.

|> While I imagine its rare that a student goes abroad for college, I think its worth noting that America is mainly where they come.

I'll tell that to all the foreign students we have here... I don't have the numbers for other studies, but in computer science there's almost as many foreign students doing a master's degree as their are Dutch students (no hard data, but it feels like approximately 40% or 50% of the total student population). From the mix of nationalities I see here, it wouldn't surprise me if Japanese students mainly go to the US (as there are very few (none??) here), but we have a huge amount of Indian and Chinese students. And I'm talking the full (two years) master programme here, including quite a few that stay here to get a job. Obviously, we have very few foreign students in the bachelor programmes since currently most of those are still in Dutch (which is changing by the way).

|> Though, these unicorns you speak of, where do I find them?

Well, since he's from the UK, I bet they're having afternoon tea with the Monster of Loch Ness. (You *do* understand sarcasm, both in Iron's and my post, right?)

|> FWIW - I don't intend to rub anyone the wrong way, if something I've said has caused insult/harm please don't take it that way. My comments and thoughts are simply my own, and I do take pride in my country.

I think much of this thread is about non-Americans not understanding why Americans are so (in our opinion) over-the-top proud of the USA. Sure, I guess just about everyone can be proud of something (by the way, no sweat fixing those dikes in New Orleans, it's what we're good at, you're welcome). But there seems to be something different about Americans...
In other countries it seems to be much more common to realize (admit??) your country is far from perfect. For instance, the Netherlands was ridiculously late abolishing slavery, just after WW2 we pulled some pretty nasty crap on Moluccas (basically promising them independence if they helped us keep Indonesia a Dutch colony, which they did, then dropped them like a brick when that plan fell apart) and I could go on for a while.
In this thread, the Americans are mostly explaining what's good and great about the USA, mostly ignoring the not-so-great things.

Or to sum it up really short: the USA has a big impact on the world and "high winds blow on high hills" (I hope that's the correct translation for "hoge bomen vangen veel wind"...).

RVW - Did you understand my comment about unicorns was sarcasm?

Earlier in this thread I made mention that I don't think any country was perfect. That all countries have issues.

I'll end this by saying, that there certainly is bad done here and abroad by the US but i think the good that is done far outweighs the bad.

Here's one more bad thing:
Torturing "terrorists" in the middle-east and Guantanamo Bay. They could have 4 hours of sleep per day, but you may choose to split it up in pieces of ten minutes. They could be waterboarded, and being told they were already betrayed by friends. And a long list of other methodes. Who wouldn't confess in that conditions?

How can you justify that?

|> How can you justify that?

I'm going to say this VERY carefully as to not spread the fire even more, so please don't misinterpret what I say. On September 11, 2001 19 terrorists from Al-Qaeda hijacked 4 passenger airplanes and flew 2 into the Twin Towers, 1 into the Pentagon, and 1 crashed into a field outside of Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Nearly 3000 people died in the attacks, 1100 of them first responders such as firefighters and medical staff.

I personally do not agree without waterboarding myself, and it has been outlawed here in the states (although they still probably use it). However, if I needed to torture 50-60 people in order to save 3000, I'd go right for it.

|> boston where is your proof on what you said so students might go to american how many is a lot is it 100 and what about stats of other country abroad student.
and also it isn't rare for students to study abroad.

"The number of international students at colleges and universities in the United States increased by five percent to 723,277 during the 2010/11 academic year, according to the Open Doors report, which is published annually by the Institute of International Education (IIE) in partnership with the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs." - [Quoted from here](http://www.iie.org/Who-We-Are/News-and-Events/Press-Center/Press-Releases/2011/2011-11-14-Open-Doors-International-Students)

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I'm curious as to why there is so much hate when someone makes a [USA] Group thread, but when someone makes a thread looking for Chinese or Polish or Spanish or French players, no one flames them?

I understand where you are coming from Iron Conquerer when you say the USA does more bad then it does good, but you have to look at everything we do, not just what the news says.

Are we full of corrupt politicians? Yes, more then likely. But then I'm sure that some people in the parliament get payed by the big oil companies and corporations.

Is our economics system in the dump? Yes it is, but so is Greece's and so is the world's

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|> Yup. Whenever the UN wants to do something, like stopping the war in Syria (A hundred people die there each day!), the US uses his veto to stop it, even when all other countries vote in favor. - Moros

Assuming the US has 300 million people, the death rate is 6887 per day. At 8.38 deaths/1,000 population (July 2009 est.). 100's of people is small. Before you go acting all smart about things why don't you do you research first? If the US gets yelled at for invading Iraq and trying to stop the war there, wouldn't we do the same thing by invading Syria?

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Soap Box = Off

*With respect to foreign anti-American angst, a simple reply*: The more one becomes part of a system, the more entitled one feels to complain about it. If a foreigner wants to see how Americans complain about America: watch CSPAN's Washington Journal call-in show; read the comments on any major news article; read the opinion section of regional newspapers (all are online). You'll find plenty of complaints.

*Going Dutch*: It seems to me that schools with English instruction (Leiden, EM Lyon, etc.) in non-native English-speaking countries offer English courses *more* (before attacking, please fully consider the implications of this word 'more') as a means to increase enrollment and make a buck: eg, a few years ago The Economist said Master's programs around the world are more and more profit-based.

That said, the Dutch model is a bit of an exception:

- Dutch language: closer to English than any other language (Anglos, Saxons, Jutes came from more or less that area); if an English word's etymology is not French, Latin, or German, it's closest root or cousin word (not necessarily an etymology, but the oldest example of the root word in question) is most likely Dutch (or roughly about 20-35% of English words, based on having read Oxford's Dictionary of Etymology's entries for A through C).
- Netherlands: small country, better English makes Dutch (companies, workers, gov't, etc.) more competitive within the EU (English is an official language), in its region, elsewhere.
- Dutch, English, American history, culture, language, religion, politics, economic models: many similar trends from 1600 to 1800. I study early modern European history, so I'm not too sure about the Dutch experience since 1800, but given the early trajectory, I'd guess the western European welfare state model and the effects of reconstruction (spiritual and material) after the two world wars might be the only major differences between us.
- 'Cousins': lots of Dutch migrants in the US; Anglo-Saxons could be considered 'proto-Dutch'; many Dutch ideas influenced England and America, especially after 1688 (William III didn't trust the English much once he was king of England, and instead had many Dutch advisers; Bank of England based on Dutch models; etc.).

Source: [I am William the Silent](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_the_Silent).

It really is quite interesting how much hate there is for America in the rest of the world. Although SE Asia might be an exception, as everyone I have met here LOVES America. To a disgusting extent, such as the love of Justin Beiber and Lady Gaga.

IronHeart, you say you live in the UK, but I assume you are not a native. Otherwise, your point about how great English schools are is laughable.