Well, recently in Gov't class we finished a project about other countries.
Today the Teacher asked the class what we thought about the project, and asked us a couple of questions:

1.If we thought being knowledgable about other countries was important and,
2. if we thought america was egocentric and why.

I raised my hand and said that i believed that our country is a bit egocentric in that we don't seem to care for/respect other countries/cultures as much as we say we do. I brought up the point that in America (at least in my school district)we aren't required to learn a 2nd language, while other countries are required to learn english. We also get lots of products from other countries and don't seem to give them much credit. The main point I brought up was that the USA is very well known for 'sticking our noses' as it were, into other countrie's affairs. We are always compalining about other cultures behaviors because we feel they are 'wrong' or 'immoral' but who is it really for us to decide?

I believe that there is nothing wrong with feeling others of different cultures are wrong, but to try to change their way of life is in most cases wrong. There are obviously execeptions in all cases.

what do you think?

Thanks for reading!

~Becca

I remember once in Global Studies, students were put in groups and assigned countries. We were suposed to prevent WW1 with diplomacy. Within 10 minuets almost 2/3 of all the countries had reconciled their differences, our teacher would have been thrilled if not for the fact that they were then plotting global domination. my best friend and I started the whole thing- our teacher was not amused, he thought we had wrecked an almost succesfull atempt to prevent the war. He wasen't quite as mad at us when he found out the only way we had formed the alliance was by promising the participating countries much in the way of the spoils of conquest. to put it bluntly, bribary

aroseindec:

Thanks for your *sort of* apology. I definately see where you're coming from, and I completely agree that some people are up to their eyeballs in Money they don't need. I just don't know how we should go about distrubuting it better...

~Becca

Marine: I would hardly count ONE vote as a "majority." That is barly over 50%, not even 51% of the population. Yes more people voted for english, but English just barely managed.

And it also wasn't only blacks who couldn't vote. People of hispanic decent couldn't vote which cut out spanish. People who didn't own enough land, know how to read or people who weren't rich enough, or didn't follow a specific religion weren't allowed to vote either. Therefore, of the people that COULD actually vote, those people ONLY spoke English or German. The other languages didn't even stand a chance, even if half of the US spoke one such language. I don't mean that we should have a vote and chance all this, it would be too time consuming, costly and nearly impossible, but I feel that in America (as stated in what this board was set up for) we should be more opening to learning more languages because or culture is so diverse.

And don't even get me started on how powerful our military is. I'd have to open a whole different board for that.

So dec, you mean mean the founding fathers chose English over German? No kidding, that is what I said. It doesn't matter what the vote was, the majority wanted English, thus we should honor that. perhaps you should write congress and ask that they have another vote to determine the language with everyone in it. Your rational, regarding this subject, would be to abolish all laws and resolutions set forth by congress until after LBJ simply because the blacks did not get a vote. And that is just plain absurd.

'I think that we should raise taxes a bit' You tell the 12% of this nation who pays an average of 50% income tax that you are going to raise their taxes a few percents so we can be 'politically correct' and 'more like Sweden'. Raising taxes is the answer to all of the liberals 'problems'.

As for a large defense budget, better safe than sory. It is not cheap to have the most powerful military in the world.

I'm sorry, I know I should have stated this and I did want to but I didn't want some long lengthy article. I agree that the moeny should not be taken away from your mother and other people in her position. It's the people that are in the high paying jobs that could stand to loose a dollar. I have friend who's father is the sentator for hte state of maryland. The live in a five bedroom house that cost about $800,000, if not more. I'm glad that my friend's family has the moeny to pay for this, but sometimes I feel that it is ridiculous. I totally agree that cuts in salary should not be made against people who have "average" jobs (average for lack of a better word...) and who receive an "average" salary. It should be the people that have enough moeny so that they can take yearly trips around the world for lack of anything better to do with their money.

aroseindec:

I agree with you in your first statement about the population that was allowed to vote only being white males and whatnont. That is true.

What I do not agree with is your proposal of taking a dollar away for each hour from the Gov't workers. I would like to point out that you didn't think about the possible situations these gov't workers may be in. I'll give you an example: My mother. Ok... in Minnesota we have a 3 BILLION dollar defecit that is ravaging the state. My mother works in the Social Services department and guess which department is getting cut to make up for the debt? SOCIAL SERVICES of course! The point is, many people will be losing their jobs, and many more will suffer through budget cuts. Many people are already struggling economically because of the recent money problems the US has been having. If you took away those seemingly unimortant dollars from my mother, it would probably kill us financially. Our pocketbooks are emptying rapidly.

I understand your idea, but I think you group too many of thr Government workers together. The government supports Social Services and Education which are the very things we really need in order to keep our society going. We cannot afford to take more money from the worker who may alreadly be stuggling.

I think that we should raise taxes a bit, make sure the money actually goes where it needs to go, cut back on other things, and try a multitude of solutions to fix the problem.

When it comes to defense... I don't know. I think War is a bad idea, but if we need to protect ourselves...

~Becca

Marine: You pointed out earlier that our founding fathers choose English to be the offical language of the US.

So you know, the vote was between German and English, English won my only one vote.

Secondly, the only people who were allowed to vote at the time were the upper class, white, Anglo Saxon males, which cut out about 3/4 the population of the US, so while English may be our official language, the vote was not left to the people who could have choosen otherwise. Of the small percentage of people who were allowed to vote, Most of them only spoken English of German to begin with. Naturally with odds like that, other languages such as Spanish, Russian, Polish, French ect, didn't stang a chance because our founding fathers thought that those people didn't count. That wasn't much in the way of what America stands for is it? The land of the free where every voice is heard?

And another thing, not to totally contradict you on the Defense vs Education Budget. I agree that I would rather have not have money take from the Defense budget and put into Education (though I oppose war). But Defense and Education are not the only two things our money goes to. How about our government employees? What if wepaid each person one dollar less per hour. One dollar, that would add up to about 8 dollars a day, 40 dollars per week. Yes I'm sure they would rather have that extra dorty dollars, but I have maid more babysitting than that, I think with the amount some of them get paid, they can sacrafic the amount of a nice shirt. Anyway, 40 dollars a week out of, lets say, 100 people adds up to 400 dollars in a week that could go to education rather than pocket money for someone's child. And of course there are more than 100 people working in government jobs. And while I feel the US should have a good budget for our Defense Department, sometimes it's just a little rediculous how much money they really have, and often times, don't really need. Lets look at these numbers shall we?

"The US Congress... recently voted to give the Pentagon $11 billion more than it had ASKED for. Do you have any idea how much $11 billion is? Of course you don't. Nobody does. It is not possible to conceive of a sum that large. Well, let's jsut try to grasp the concept of $1 [billion]. Imagine that you are in a vault filled with one dollar bills and that you were told you could keep each one you initialed. Say, too, for the sake of argument that you could initial one dolalr bill per second and that you worked straight through without ever stopping... If you initialed one dollar per second, you would make $1,000 every seventeen minutes. After 12 days of nonstop effort you would aquire your first $! million. Thus, it would take you 120 days to accumulate $10 million, and 1,200 days- something over three years- to reach $100 million. After 31.7 years you would become a billionaire." That's how much, $1 billion is. Now imagine $11 billion. Insane? Ridiculous? I think so. I'm all for the defense of the nation, but $11 billion more than they even ASKED for? Makes you wonder how much they got BEFORE the "uneeded" money.


*Quote came from Bill Bryson's 'I'm a Stranger Here Myself' Published in 1999 by Broadway Books.*

If you morons want everyone to learn another language perhaps you should explain to the American why MORE money is leaving the Defense Budget for the Education Budget, and see what kind of reaction real Americans give you.

aroseindec:

THANK YOU! Everything you stated is completely true, you said what I have been trying to say for the last couple of days! Thank you for posting, and continue to do so if you wish!

jstar:

Yes, there are very brutal exceptions. I'm just trying to make the point that if someone from another culture told us that for us to have so many freedoms and rights is wrong, would we want to change? (These conflicting beliefs were highlighted by the sept 11 attacks) That's the kind of thing that bothers me. Just because simething is different doesn't make it wrong. And America has done it many times

~Becca

I agree with the fact that Americans should be learning more languages. When I was fifteen I went on a student ambassador program to Denmark, Sweden and Norway. One day two of my friends and I got separated from the group in the middle of a large town in Sweden. None of us spoke Swedish. We tried desperatly to find someone who spoke English, but after six failed attempts we began to worry. Where were all the people that were *supposed* to speak English? No, we were the foriengers, perhaps we should have taken the time to learn enough of the language to get by. Finally we found someone who spoke french. After six years of french in school I was able to communcicate with this person and we found our way back to the bus to wait for the group. Or the time I had to make a telephone call to Spain. I didn't speak any Spanish either and I was hung up on four times.
Since these little "adventures" I have found it very important to know even just a little bit of several languages because you never know what might happen, both in your own country and outside of it. In thie world today, people travel everywhere, all the time and by the time one reaches college, you will find that almost everyone you met has been to a different country and has some story to tell about how the language barrier affected them. I don't feel that we need to know every language fluently, but we should know enough of several languages to be able to manage in this world. By thinking that everyone one in the world should know English, I'm sorry to offend anyone, but that is ridiculous. In America, we pride ourselves on having a free education where everyone is allowed to learn. In other countries, that's not the case. Most people cannot afford school for their children and in some cultures, women aren't allowed to be educated. How can we expect these people to learn English? And yet these are the people we are more likely to come in contact with because they are the "normal" everyday people of their country. I feel that no lanuage should be superior to any other, they are all equaly important regardless of who or how many people speak it. When you're at college, or you have your summer vacation, spend an hour a day for a few weeks taking a course that teaches another lanugage. You'll learn the basics, and most often the basics are all one needs to get by.

The bible comes down pretty harsh on aldulterers as well. It's what you get when you have both the death penalty and almost no separation of church and state.

Have you heard of that woman in Africa who is sentenced to be stoned for commiting adultery? She will be stoned as soon as her baby has been "weened" from her. Americans have tried to convince the government to not stone her...but to no avail.

Who are we to try to change a culture just because they want to bury a woman up to her neck and then pelt large stones at her head? That's their culture and it is not our business. "Human rights" only extends to those in america and we have no right no try to extend those to anybody else!

Okay...sarcasm ended. You said that there are exceptions...I just wanted to give one.

Marine16: I created this board, so i most definately have a right to post on it.

TrickyWidget: Thank you! I completely agree with you! We need to be educated thoroughly on different cultures and languages for a plethora of reasons, and those you brought up are a huge part of it!

JoeyDauben: I'm not saying that we need to print everything in seperate languages, not by a long shot. What I'm trying to say is we should know/speak more languages than just english so that we can communicate with not only other Americans of different backgrounds, but also other countries. I mean, I take spanish in school. It's really great to be able to carry on a conversation and communicate with someone in a different language. We could use that to a huge advantage politically, socially, culturally, and just for the sake of it's being interesting! I'm not asking for each and every book/letter/etc to be printed in each individual language, but I think there would be huge advantages to be fluent in more than one language. Know what I mean?

~Becca

Marine, all we're saying is that by firing off names, you just make yourself look like a fool - I agree with you about English, but calling other people names just makes you look more uneducated.

Being a history type of guy (real history, not the manufactured stuff in school textbooks), I see a very important duty to learn about other cultures and stuff.

Not only is it beneficial, but it's really interesting.

...just as long as we don't get into that whole politically correct mindset where "Oh, well Hispanics make up a majority etc., etc., so we should publish everything in Spanish."

Nahhh...

Cultural studies is good, yes.

PC is not.

Yes, Becca, I rather tend to agree with you. It is definitely a good idea to study other cultures and languages. You wanna hear why I think so? Because the better we understand others, the better we understand ourselves, and the better we can get along in the world. And don't worry about the trooper, he's just bitter over not being able to compose a coherent argument of his own. *hug*

BTW soldier, are you implicating that only if you speak english do you matter?

You are right, you would run into people talking chinese, as logn as you remain on the Asain mainland. But in the rest of the world everyone who counts speaks english.

Actually hundreds of millions more people speak Mandarin Chinese than English. Not that it is as useful in some areas. but in gross numbers you're more likely to run into a speaker of Chinese than any other language.

I fail to see any valid debate you set forawrd, Beccanidge, perhaps you should stop wasting space on this board, you moron.

English is the current language of scholars and buisnessmen. It has surpassed Latin. There is no need for Americans to know any other language.

Marine, You are the moron, actually you're more of a Jackass for insulting other people's opinions. I have absolutely no respect for you, and you are the one who should leave this site. The point of this site is to debate and discuss, not hate and disrespect. Get your head out of your @$$ and sign up for Jerry Springer.