At 12:30 AM 3 March 2002 -0500, kilopascal wrote: >And Jim, many are [racist]!
John is absolutely right: there are a lot of racists in the world (and they certainly are not confined to the USA). But that has nothing to do with knowing a foreign language (sure, there may be some correlation, but it would not be particularly strong). My point was to say: just because you do not know something does NOT mean you are against that something. Which is what John is trying to claim. It is perfectly possible to have no knowledge or opinion on most things, including the metric system. That is where I think most Americans are, and certainly where my personal experience tells me a lot of them are. John goes on: >You must live in an ivory tower, where everybody thinks pure and pleasant >thoughts and accepts and loves everybody else. Come down out of that tower >once and a while and see the real world as it is. John, I am the one who deals every day with a wide range of people: wages from $8 to $50 per hour; education from no high school diploma to advanced degrees; skills from total klutzes to extraordinarily talented. I have gay employees, hispanic employees, employees with bipolar disorders, employees who know very little English but a lot of Mandarin Chinese, employees who want to convert me to their religion, male employees who stink most days, female employees who show too much cleavage, and on and on. Is this what you call an "ivory tower"? However, regardless of their widely varying styles and circumstances,**MOST** of these people rise to my expectations. If I let them know I expect a lot, AND that I am confident in them that they can achieve it, then they most often do. Maybe, John, because you seem to think so little of the masses of Americans, and consider them so ignorant and arrogant, they also "rise" to what you expect of them. Or, perhaps, you spend way too much time in red-neck bars, and are the one who needs to get out of your "ivory tower." Why should I or others believe you have any broader exposer to a cross section of Americans than I do? How is it that you think you meet a wide variety of the population by which you come to your conclusions? Jim Elwell
