At 11:52 PM 5/24/01 +0200 Sonja van Baardwijk-Holten wrote:
>At which point you
>_litterally_ claimed that American's had many quote <reasons to be arrogant>.
>And that is how I interpreted your resulting post with listed accomplishments
>by Americans as a reason for arrogance.
[snip]
>I would have granted you the right to be
>proud, but as Dan and Marving already pointed out justification for arrogance
>is a rather sore spot to most of us.
Please reread Dan Minette's post on this subject.
>Btw in the mean time a
>lot of the items in that post have been stricken because they weren't sole or
>major American accomplishements at all.
No such thing has occurred at all!
First off, if you would reread my original post, you will notice that I
almost never declared anything to be a "sole major American
accomplishment." (The exception was landing a man on the moon, which was
very much a sole American accomplishment.)
Secondly, Gautam made an oustanding post today which left Charlie Bell's
debunking attempts in shreds. By any measure of technological
achievement, be it patents, be it Nobel Prizes, be it whatever - America is
certainly "a leader", as I described it.
Thirdly, not one person has argued that America was not a decisive
difference in WWII and the Cold War. Nor has anyone argued that America
did not help speed the end of the Great War.
Fourthly, no one has so much as raised a peep of disagreement about
America's ethical advances, cultural proliferation, or athletic excellence.
Finally, if you really want to know the reason why Americans are sometimes
and often arrogant around others -= it is because an otherwise reasonably
intelligent European woman like yourself could publicly say something "I
once knew an American who made a list of American accomplishments - but
they were mostly stricken."
JDG
__________________________________________________________
John D. Giorgis - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - ICQ #3527685
"The point of living in a Republic after all, is that we do not live by
majority rule. We live by laws and a variety of institutions designed
to check each other." -Andrew Sullivan 01/29/01
