Why Europe Is Doomed And Japan Is Right To Keep Out Foreigners

[Mulboyne]

Brussels Journal: Astarte and Amaterasu - The Diverging Destinies of Europe and Japan. -- Part 1

There are various drawbacks to an expat's life in Japan, starting with the big task of learning the redundancy-packed language and dealing with the cultural parochialism of the population – a parochialism in the intellectual sense only, for in the material sense the Japanese have mastered the best the West has to offer. A good example of these detriments transpired in 2004, when Shintaro Ishihara, the governor of Tokyo, opined about the French language. Mr. Ishihara stated that French is disqualified from being an international language because it is "a language in which nobody can count."

Indeed, French numbers from x70 through x99 are weird constructs on a 20 base (e.g. 91 is expressed as “four times twenty plus eleven”), but that’s as far as it goes. What's more significant is that this was a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black: for, with respect to counting, Japanese may well be the most dysfunctional language in the world. There are different Japanese vocabularies for counting long, thin objects, or flat, thin objects, or small round objects, or ships, or books, or sheep or cars. The proliferation of this is practically boundless; mercifully, outside of specialists, most Japanese give up after mastering perhaps five hundred words just to count from one to twenty. Moreover, the largest numerical unit for which there is a word in Japanese is ten thousand [Err...oku? cho?]. A foreigner in a business meeting who mentions an item like the 67,835,303 euros that his company earned last year, must inevitably witness Japanese executives stopping to count on their fingers in order to divide 67,835,303 by 10,000 so that they be able to grasp and express the figure in their language.

This is significant too: the man who made this amazingly parochial remark is one of the most feted people in Japan: superstar politician, famous novelist, polemicist, yachtsman, and Keio University graduate. And his remark holds one of the keys to our subject matter today. Inconveniences and differences notwithstanding, there is one overwhelming blessing that makes me glad to be in Japan. It's the daily experience of living in a country that, unlike Western Europe, and increasingly the United States, does not actively pursue it's own extinction...Japan's history is crevassed with the same follies, cruelties, injustices and genocides as Europe's is, if proportionately smaller because Japan is so much smaller...All this notwithstanding, one does not see the same class envy in Japan, the same anti-elitism and toxic "progressivism" that has wreaked so much havoc on Western Europe and on the United States and Canada. Japan is as socialist as France or Germany, but without the venom, coveting and selfish indulgence that characterizes this political persuasion in Europe...

...Europe has largely lost its Christian religion – its main spiritual and cultural force. And it's not Europe's but the religion's fault – its tyrannical ways, corruption, dogmatism; its suppression of sex and merriment, its cruelty and persecution of nonbelievers. And so, the religion, to make amends, has made a turnabout and is now promoting the very destructive forces that it used to inhibit: homosexuality and Islam, tolerance of the intolerable, unqualified redistribution of power and income, universalism instead of particularism...Japan's religion is desiccated too. Japanese Buddhism has mutated into a a panoply of 2000 weird personality cults fleecing their mantra-chanting flocks. Even the legitimate and ancient branches are little more than burial businesses selling cemetery plots and sticks with magic Chinese characters that are supposed to do for the deceased what papal indulgences once purported to do for the living. Zen has retained its depth and its spiritual force, but it has many more adherents in Europe and America than it has in Japan. And Christianity in Japan is not the powerful current it is in Korea but rather a fashion item: a pretext to wear a designer cross pendant and to have a wedding with Felix Mendelssohn's music and Fred Astaire's wardrobe. Nonetheless, the conduct of the people is moral, humane values abound, civility and mutual consideration are pervasive.

Europe is being strangled by a clique of unelected bureaucrats; regulations-writing mandarins filled with hubris about the inerrancy of their wisdom and its salutary effects on the little people. A constitution of 160,000 words, such as was signed by the 27 EU member states in 2004 is not, cannot be, an instrument of liberation but only an instrument of oppression. The American constitution has 4400 words. Japan too is governed by an unelected cabal: very old men of influence manipulating party politics and known, aptly, as the "black curtain." And Japan's self-perpetuating bureaucracy is second to none. The system has been honed to such perfection that high government employees who retire ascend to "heaven," known as amakudari. Heaven consists of quasi-governmental, for-profit corporations created to provide make-believe, high-paying jobs for retired bureaucrats, such as enforcing the myriad regulations and their attendant levies that said retirees wrote into the code book when they were still on government pay. But embezzling money and wrapping a country in red tape for selfish reasons are one thing. Wholesale treason, making of Europe Eurabia, planting the seeds of perpetual strife and future civil wars, robbing the native peoples of their homelands and birthrights, siccing new, totalitarian laws on them to stifle their dissent, persecuting relentlessly those who object to the ethnocide – all these are another matter altogether. And Japan knows nothing of such horrors.

Both Europe and Japan have deprived their peoples of the fundamental right from which all other rights flow: the right of armed self-defense. Allegedly, this has been done in the people's own interest. But the rates of violent crime have gone up dramatically since the enactment of such forcible disarmament of Europe's citizenry. In England and Wales, for instance, homicide rates have gone up by 50% after the government enacted a ban on firearms in the mid-1990s. In continental Europe, armed robberies and shooting homicides continue despite the long-standing disarmament of the population, or perhaps because of it. In Japan, in contrast, the same strict banning of firearms has not increased crime, and homicide and robbery are, in statistical terms, practically nonexistent.

Japan has inherent centrifugal forces as much as any Western European country used to have even before its importation of Muslims. The Tokyoite feels about the Osakan what the Berliner feels about the Bavarian, and he expresses it in a different dialect too. The Okinawan's regard of the main islands is every bit as ambivalent as the Sicilian's is with respect to the boot of the mother country. Japanese history is as packed with bloody interregional warfare as Germany's or Italy's are. Why then have the modern-day Western European peoples allowed, and then capitulated before, their own colonization by alien, unabsorbable and, in part, violently criminal newcomers, but the Japanese have not? Among the Japanese, the attitudinal difference about immigration is between those who want to set the cap at ½%, and those who want the cap at 2% of the population. That is the spectrum of opinions among bureaucrats, politicians and other elites too. And to suffer the suppression and demolition of the national identity and heritage, such as Western Europeans acquiesce to, or the displacement of the nation's language, such as Americans eagerly implement, is, in Japan, unthinkable. Japan is much the better for it.

Japan's women no longer want to breed. The country's childbirth rates are at the same critically low levels as Western Europe's: about 1.3 children per woman, versus the 2.2 required for population replacement. Europe's governing elite decided a long time ago that to resolve the demographic crisis it was necessary to import Third-World Muslims. But demography is destiny, not only in the fractions of population growth but also in who those fractions consist of. With a Third-World Muslim population estimated at 25 to 55 million (and intentional lying or obfuscation by the Establishment in this matter, e.g. here), and with such population's breeding ratios being 4 – 8 children per woman, versus the indigenes' 1.3, it does not take much prescience to foretell that Europe's culture, its civic underpinnings, even its physical landscape will inevitably come to resemble those of the Maghreb, Arabia and HinduKush. And yet, Europe's brainy minders have failed to make this simple extrapolation, and they persecute anyone who does make it. Japan, on the other hand, has been preparing for a future with a smaller and older population. Instead of importing Asian nurses, Japan has developed robots that care for hospital patients, or it exports its old and infirm to the countries where the nurses are. Instead of importing window and wall washers, it has developed nano-polymers that repel dust and dirt. Instead of importing street sweepers, it has mobilized retired volunteers to maintain the cleanliness of their own neighborhoods. Instead of opening its doors to primitives who happen to be refugees, Japan donates huge sums of money to refugee organizations. Japan does not wish to dilute itself, for any reason...more...

[Mulboyne]

Brussels Journal: Astarte and Amaterasu - The Diverging Destinies of Europe and Japan. -- Part 2

In the 1st part of this essay, we hypothesized that the European civilization, both in the mother continent and in its diaspora, is pursuing a path of gradual self-obliteration for reasons rooted in a deep, collective psychosis. We stated further that Japan has similar reasons to have acquired a deep collective psychosis, yet it is pursuing the path of life. We will try here to shed some light on the possible reasons for this divergence. There is a wonderful if anecdotal quote from the great Euro-Chilean-Mexican-Parisian film director and polymath, Alejandro Jodorowsky: "One day, someone showed me a glass of water that was half full. And he said, 'Is it half full or half empty?' So I drank the water. No more problem." Jodorowsky's aphorism sums up the difference in the mental landscapes of the West and the East. The West has sat for decades now, tortured, hunched under the weight of its past follies and malfeasances, pondering a skull, a glass half full. "To be or not to be?" It has decided, as per its intellectual seers, that the white race is the cancer of human history. It has decided not to be...The Japanese, on the other hand, whose moral glass has been just as half full as the European peoples' has been, just drank the water. No more problem. And that's what one experiences living in Japan, as opposed to the degrading self-abasement and conscious self-dismantling one witnesses every day in the West. Asked whether the dog has Buddha's nature, the Oriental sage lifts his leg to urinate on the questioner. And he will do so within a split second from the posing of the question. To arrive at this answer it will have taken him twenty years of shutting down the chatter of his mind, to align with his True Nature through arduous meditation.

...Let the stupid gaijin flock to Western Universities on the taxpayer's subsidy to take academic courses with titles like The Phallus, Queer Musicology, Blackness, Nonviolent Responses to Terrorism, and Drag: Theories of Transgenderism and Performance. In Japan, Korea and China, equally, one goes to university not to masturbate for four years at society's expense but to study nano and bio technology, medicine, and other useful things...The East is governed by the direct perception of reality; the West by zealously enforced theories that purport to represent reality. It's the earthy voice of Amaterasu versus the muzzled croak of Astarte-Europa. When the latter voice is silenced, Pied Piper charlatans march the young outside the city's walls and off the cliff...In Japan, the Goddess of Creation, literally Mother Nature, is everywhere. The West has various derogatory words for it, from Animism to Vitalism, but one who has experienced what it means in everyday life will not dismiss it lightly. Grand trees have sacred ropes tied around them, great rocks are the subject of veneration, and waterfalls serve for spiritual purification. The birth and rapid death of cherry blossoms are not only an occasion for drunken office parties alfresco, but also annual reminders that life is fleeting and this, unimproved, is the best and most beautiful of all possible worlds. Little shrines to Inari, the goddess of the soil and its life-giving crop, rice, are everywhere, guarded by two stone foxes. And these are Japanese trees and blossoms and rocks and waterfalls and soil and rice and foxes; not the spawns of global Gaia Inc., managed by Albert Gore, Jr through the local franchise of The Green Party. That's how one comes to love one's native land and to resist its adulteration by incompatible foreign peoples, cultures, ideologies and, not the least, interests.

Europe once had similar beliefs and observances. Their traces abound: hard and eternal as Stonehenge or evanescent as the flower wreaths on the heads of Slavonic or Scandinavian girls at their maypole dances. But the church, which inherited the Hebrew prophets' hatred of Astarte, co-opted a few ancient rites as Christmas trees or Easter eggs, or stamped them out with fire and sword a thousand years ago. And so, the umbilical cord that connects a people to its soil and its tribe was strictured in Europe and its diaspora, replaced first by the ecumenical church, and then by universalist intellectual constructs such as Marxism, psychoanalysis, and liberalism. But in Japan, the ancient link has survived, and that is one of the main reasons why Japan is surviving while the West is in the process of self-liquidation

...There is something the European peoples can learn from Japan about the meaning and place of religion. First, that the grand vision, based on the life of a foreign individual described in imported scrolls, does not have to displace the local Goddess but may live with her in a happy symbiosis. Thus, Buddhism cohabits with Shintoism, and Gautama with Amaterasu, and both are equally happy to get married in a Presbyterian church. The phenomenon of religious wars, of religious hatred, of a despotic, jealous God, is unknown in the history of Japan. It follows that a God that is zealous, tyrannical and unforgiving is not healthy for the survival of an advanced civilization. The West has indeed abandoned such a vision of its God, and most of Europe has abandoned him altogether. The problem is that the irrational, self-sacrificial alternative creed that has filled the heart of the revamped Church and the heads of the West's elites – the creed of liberalism and allophilia – has resulted in the importation into the West of tens of millions of rapidly multiplying foreigners who brought with them their tyrannical, absolutist, dissent-hating God with implacable claims on universal fealty...more...

[Samurai_Jerk]

Is AK moonlighting at The Brussels Journal?

[Adhesive]

Interesting read, but I don't find it as applicable to the U.S. situation as the author makes it out. Perhaps cultural suicide is more of a European problem? I live in an extremely diverse part of the States, and I tend to see the vast majority of immigrants adopting, if not invigorating, the U.S. values that are worth preserving.

[kusai Jijii]

"In Japan, one goes to university not to masturbate for four years at society's expense but to study nano and bio technology, medicine, and other useful things.."

FUCKING BULLSHIT!
This crap belongs in the 'another newbie discovers Japan' thread.

[Samurai_Jerk]

"In Japan, one goes to university not to masturbate for four years at society's expense but to study nano and bio technology, medicine, and other useful things.."

FUCKING BULLSHIT!
This crap belongs in the 'another newbie discovers Japan' thread.

Yeah, there was a lot of BS in there. And if Asian universities are so good, why does everyone (especially in China and Korea) want to send their kids to school in the West?

[Catoneinutica]

Well, this issue is a minefield, but I think it's not unreasonable for a country to expect its immigrants to eventually assimilate and take on the prevailing values of the host country. This seems to be working for the US with its large influx of Hispanics.

France and England, with their large numbers of Mohammadans who cling to the olde-tyme traditions of cousin-marryin', honor killin', hatred of secular democracy, insistence on sharia...not so good.



They don't call it "Londonistan" for nothing!

-catone
-good riddance to that anti-semitic carnival barker Ken Livingstone

[Samurai_Jerk]

I've always wondered why Muslims and South Asians in the US (even the scarf wearing zealots) seems to have settled in relatively nicely and be middle or upper-middle class, while in the Europe they live in ghettos and commit crimes.

[james]

and say that western countries, while actively pursuing immigration, need to be far more selective about whom they allow to settle.

- if you want sharia law and hate freedom, go back to whatever third world shithole you came from where it's still practised. gtfo.

- if you don't want to make a reasonable attempt to learn the language and culture and respect the values of the new culture, gtfo.

- do not expect secular institutions to accomodate your ass-backwards religionism.

in canada, certain groups have been known to integrate well, work hard and contribute to society. in my personal experience i'd say polish immigrants do the best by far. chinese and indian immigrants also seem to do well. other groups are notoriously ill-suited to canada. in particular, somalis have been very problematic but these are over-reaching generalizations.

[2triky]

I've always wondered why Muslims and South Asians in the US (even the scarf wearing zealots) seems to have settled in relatively nicely and be middle or upper-middle class, while in the Europe they live in ghettos and commit crimes.

There certainly is truth to that...the Muslim population of Europe seems to have a higher degree of fanaticism than in the States...but then those fanatics may be buoyed by the fact they have greater numbers to draw upon than in the U.S.

Perhaps there is something to be said of the relative degree of upward social mobility in the States versus the lack thereof in Europe, for immigrants specifically. Just a thought.

[2triky]

and say that western countries, while actively pursuing immigration, need to be far more selective about whom they allow to settle.

- if you want sharia law and hate freedom, go back to whatever third world shithole you came from where it's still practised. gtfo.

- if you don't want to make a reasonable attempt to learn the language and culture and respect the values of the new culture, gtfo.

- do not expect secular institutions to accomodate your ass-backwards religionism.

in canada, certain groups have been known to integrate well, work hard and contribute to society. in my personal experience i'd say polish immigrants do the best by far. chinese and indian immigrants also seem to do well. other groups are notoriously ill-suited to canada. in particular, somalis have been very problematic but these are over-reaching generalizations.

Although that may be construed as provocative, I certainly see your point. The problem with that segment of the population is they see themselves as Muslims first and residents/citizens of XYZ country second. Their religion is more than just that, it's a geopolitical construct that colors their vision of the world.

Certainly though, if someone has a deep and abiding disdain for a place, it is hypocritical to express an intense loathing yet try to extract all the benefits of living there.

[Kuang_Grade]

I've always wondered why Muslims and South Asians in the US (even the scarf wearing zealots) seems to have settled in relatively nicely and be middle or upper-middle class, while in the Europe they live in ghettos and commit crimes.

The welfare state in Europe makes living at the bottom slightly more tolerable while the blatant discrimination and more closed off economy/work rules makes it difficult to move up. In the US, the bottom is pretty harsh but the economy is more open to newcomers (although many immigrants in the US get ahead by saving up some capital and then just hiring other immigrants and then exploiting the shit out of them)

[ttjereth]

Although that may be construed as provocative, I certainly see your point. The problem with that segment of the population is they see themselves as Muslims first and residents/citizens of XYZ country second. Their religion is more than just that, it's a geopolitical construct that colors their vision of the world.

Certainly though, if someone has a deep and abiding disdain for a place, it is hypocritical to express an intense loathing yet try to extract all the benefits of living there.

Which is funny since islam teaches to obey the laws of the land you are in

[FG Lurker]

(although many immigrants in the US get ahead by saving up some capital and then just hiring other immigrants and then exploiting the shit out of them)

Sounds like some gaijin in Japan!

[Tsuru]

While most of the stuff written on Japan is BS, there are some very valid points made on the difference between Europe and the US. I (living in western Europe and paying Western Europe taxes) for one am getting increasingly fed up with our government subsidizing those who do not choose to get up off their asses and find a better life for themselves or making life easier for those that do. There's two major problems:
- People who are content with the ~€800 a month they get in welfare so they don't have to get up early to go to work. The minimum wage in this country is only slightly higher than this, so the choice for people with no education is easy. Solution? Incease minimum wages (which won't happen unless we want to drive our businesses out of the country) or take away at least some of welfare for people who have absolutely no good reason to be on it. In a country with more incentive programmes than I can poke a stick at, where getting a tertiary education is still free and healthcare is good and still relatively affordable, being poor and miserable is a fucking choice YOU made. So get a fucking job already.
- A arrogant government that has forgotten the meaning of the word "civil servant", without any will whatsoever to operate more efficiently and curtail spending on unnecessary flim flam such as lavish government buildings and cars, hiring more and more people to try and sustain an unsustainable work ethic and providing subsidies for just about anything. The only solution they have for anything is throwing money at it without looking at what's being done with it. Too bad we're probably stuck with them until 2011 and the opposition is so hopelessly divided there is no serious alternative to speak of.

But hey, even if you are a good, law-abiding citizen on a good wage you'll never be able to keep enough of your money to get out of your present situation or do something else than working until you drop. Simply having money or inheriting it is taxed, we have a 72% tax bracket for those fortunate enough to make over €50k a year, housing and anything related to real estate is ridiculously expensive (but nontheless idiot dinkies still keep coughing up more money just so they can live in a shitty €350k apartment or row house with very little furniture).

I guess I'm saying I still want to go to North America and own a house with a garden and a garage.

[Uhhuh35]

[quote="Tsuru"]While most of the stuff written on Japan is BS, there are some very valid points made on the difference between Europe and the US. I (living in western Europe and paying Western Europe taxes) for one am getting increasingly fed up with our government subsidizing those who do not choose to get up off their asses and find a better life for themselves or making life easier for those that do. There's two major problems:
- People who are content with the ~€]
Conservatism is the answer isn't it? Welcome aboard!

[AssKissinger]

Is AK moonlighting at The Brussels Journal?

]Japan's religion is desiccated too. Japanese Buddhism has mutated into a a panoply of 2000 weird personality cults fleecing their mantra-chanting flocks. Even the legitimate and ancient branches are little more than burial businesses selling cemetery plots and sticks with magic Chinese characters that are supposed to do for the deceased what papal indulgences once purported to do for the living. Zen has retained its depth and its spiritual force, but it has many more adherents in Europe and America than it has in Japan. And Christianity in Japan is not the powerful current it is in Korea but rather a fashion item: a pretext to wear a designer cross pendant and to have a wedding with Felix Mendelssohn's music and Fred Astaire's wardrobe. Nonetheless, the conduct of the people is moral, humane values abound, civility and mutual consideration are pervasive.[/QUOTE]

Whatever on this subject. Anyone who thinks that Muslims should be allowed to immigrate into his country is Goddamn fool.

[AssKissinger]

I guess I'm saying I still want to go to North America and own a house with a garden and a garage.

Dude, Europe and America may have different problems but America is so fucked. The people are so fucking stupid it's shocking. Crime is fucking nuts. The government is so crooked it's hard to wrap your head around. It's so geared up for the super rich to fuck you in the ass you WILL die poor. Everyone, even people making over 100,000 in thier forties MUST turn all their money over to the health care providers toward the end. Wanna retire? Fuck you, dude! The laws are set up so the companies do not have to pay you your pensions even though you've been paying in for years. All that money is earmarked for billionaires. The American dream is nothing but a flushed handful of used toilet paper.

[Buraku]

If Japan's xenophobic immigrant policy was so successful why were they demanding so many Brazilians during the 70s and 80s (lack of workers ?)
Without true contact with the outside, Japan will just rot like an over ripe fruit. Just look at how good the land of chrysanthemum and cherry blossoms was doing before Perry forced them to open up with his warship. Japanese were stagnating, their xenophobic feudal lords did little trade with the outside and people were dying from famine. American may have a problem with the super rich, but I think Japan has a problem with a huge middle class who can only scrape by each day because of the 10 years of economic stagnation.

I agree then we have the other extreme in the West, the fucked up policies in the United States and Europe. Where farmers and factory owners want to exploit cheap labor from illegal immigrants and therefore thousands of undocumented enter from Mexico etc and enter from the Muslim world each day. The Turks are good workers in Germany but Islam and democracy just do not work together IMO, look at how they wanted women only gyms in Harvard (yes Harvard the United States and not some school in Mecca)

[Tsuru]

Conservatism is the answer isn't it? Welcome aboard!

Thanks, but I think I need to set something straight here. I'm not a conservative by any means, I'm a registered member of the Socialist party (the one to the left of Labour), and even I feel far too many people in this country are getting a free ride from a government that's just a black hole of misallocated resources with hard-working citizens getting the bill. We got a budget problem? Hell, here's a novel idea: let's increase VAT to 20%! I'm in my twenties and already fed up with propping up a welfare nanny state that probably won't be around when it's time for me to retire. My fiance was staggered when she got her first Dutch paycheck and saw how many little taxes and premiums were deducted from both our salaries... and she is from Japan! The shit we are getting from the INS for my better half is only a motivation driving us away from staying here... got a problem with us living and working here do they? Well, we'll do it somewhere else just fine.

I think Canada will suit us just fine. I'll even give up Dutch citizenship if I need to.

[Greji]

Dude, Europe and America may have different problems but America is so fucked. The people are so fucking stupid it's shocking. Crime is fucking nuts. The government is so crooked it's hard to wrap your head around. It's so geared up for the super rich to fuck you in the ass you WILL die poor. Everyone, even people making over 100,000 in thier forties MUST turn all their money over to the health care providers toward the end. Wanna retire? Fuck you, dude! The laws are set up so the companies do not have to pay you your pensions even though you've been paying in for years. All that money is earmarked for billionaires. The American dream is nothing but a flushed handful of used toilet paper.

Well, I guess nobody's perfect....

[Adhesive]

Thanks, but I think I need to set something straight here. I'm not a conservative by any means, I'm a registered member of the Socialist party (the one to the left of Labour), and even I feel far too many people in this country are getting a free ride from a government that's just a black hole of misallocated resources with hard-working citizens getting the bill. We got a budget problem? Hell, here's a novel idea: let's increase VAT to 20%! I'm in my twenties and already fed up with propping up a welfare nanny state that probably won't be around when it's time for me to retire.

Forgive my ignorance, but isn't this the inevitable by-product of socialism? I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around you being a registered socialist yet complaining about people lacking motivation to work (due in large part to the supple tit of the nanny state) and the high taxes required to accomodate their lofty goals.

[Tsuru]

The basic theory behind socialism is to consume according to one's needs and contributing to one's ability. You'll find that the party I support strives to get as many people as possible to contribute and is against people holding out their hands if they don't have a good reason to. I support free education and universal healthcare, but I oppose the blatant abuse of social security caused by people who feel they are entitled to free handouts. Social security is to be used as a safety net like it was meant to in its inception, not as a means to support people's livelihoods if they don't want to get a job. The same goes for the government in its role as an employer for people who wouldn't last one week in a normal job. Work is an excellent way to get people interested and involved, the problem is incentive. The lack of incentive at the low end for the people because of minimum wage being nearly the same as holding out for welfare grants, and hammering taxes down people's throats if they happen to have the drive or the talent to climb a little higher.

[2triky]

Which is funny since islam teaches to obey the laws of the land you are in

Good point. Unfortunately, for the non-believers (i.e. non-Muslims), the most vociferous and fanatical element in Islam selectively choose to apply certain tenets of the religion ~ and conversion of the world trumps obedience of the law. Oh well.

[Adhesive]

Dude, Europe and America may have different problems but America is so fucked. The people are so fucking stupid it's shocking.

Well yeah, except for all the nobel laureates, the majority of the world's top universities, and the inventors of some of the greatest technological advancements the world has seen in the last five decades....every one is pretty much an idiot.

Seriously though, it all depends where you are...obviously if you grew up in bum-fuck Mississippi, where anybody with a shred of intelligence flees after graduating high school, you aren't going to be running into the most enlightened individuals.

As far as upward mobility is concerened, I honestly don't know how the U.S. compares to any other developed country. I've seen numbers, but they can be skewed toward whatever result is desired. I will say this though, I grew up in a family where neither parent had finished high school, I spent most of my time playing in the parking lot of a dilapidated apartment complex as my parents were upstairs snorting their $3.50/hour salary up their noses. I was a high school drop-out working with nothing but Mexican immigrants in almost every job that would take me. But, I was able to work hard, put myself through school, graduate at the top of my class, and am now about to graduate with a law degree and earn enough money to have a life that neither of my parents could have ever imagined.

Now, what's the difference between me and every other Mexican that I worked with that is skewing the numbers to show that the poor stay poor? I busted my ass during the nights and weekends studying to better myself, and they either a) took on an extra job at night to make enough money to afford flashy rims for their cars, or b) simply spent evenings and weekends downing Corona and bashing pinatas. Now, for all I know, they made the right decision, and they will live a much more fulfilling life than myself, but the point is that any of them could have done exactly what I did, and knowing that, it is very difficult for me to criticize the U.S. as being a place where the deck is stacked so favorably toward the rich that the poor have no choice but to stay poor and uneducated.

[AssKissinger]

Yeah.

It's like this though. If you took 1000 Japanese and 1000 Americans and put them in a room together. The smartest and richest dude would be an American. The next thousand smartest would all be Japanese and the 999 dumbest would be Americans. And those 999 dumb people would also be really violent.

[Adhesive]

Yeah.

It's like this though. If you took 1000 Japanese and 1000 Americans and put them in a room together. The smartest and richest dude would be an American. The next thousand smartest would all be Japanese and the 999 dumbest would be Americans. And those 999 dumb people would also be really violent.

Intelligence is difficult to quantify, and violence is entirely under-rated.

[Adhesive]

One more thing that I find incredibly ironic is the fact that many immigrants that insist on imposing their value systems on their host countries are the same ones who just fled from a country where those very same value-systems have failed so spectacularly.

[Adhesive]

The basic theory behind socialism is to consume according to one's needs and contributing to one's ability.

Ah, well there's the problem, I think most socialists are promoting the theory of being given according to one's need and contributing to one's ability. The funny thing about that is needs and ability tend to be negatively correlated!

[Tsuru]

That's not exactly the case... a lot of the supporters of radical Islam in Western Europe are the grandchildren of immigrants, they hold European passports and don't speak good enough Arabic to hold their own if they were to return to wherever their grandparents came from.
They are mostly kids who feel discriminated against because a lot of companies won't hire them, and out of frustration they turn radical Islam and/or setting fire to cars and rioting. So as I was saying....

(This is of course aimed at your second-to-last reply)

Ah, well there's the problem, I think most socialists are promoting the theory of being given according to one's need and contributing to one's ability. The funny thing about that is needs and ability tend to be negatively correlated!

Nicely put, I've never looked at it like that. The thing is, during the 1990s a lot of Dutch manufacturing companies went bust that employed many tens of thousands of people as the (labour) government failed to stick up for them. When I look at Canada I see a country that recognizes its need for a solid manufacturing base, supporting companies who make and export stuff that people other countries want to buy, and where engineering is a highly regarded profession. This is a problem not so much for Western Europe as it is specifically for the Netherlands, where despite our hydraulic achievements actually becoming an engineer is not a choice a lot of kids want to make due to a variety of factors, primarily the disregard for the profession by the management side of companies and laymen. It's simply not as "cool" to be one as it is even in countries like the UK or Germany. But it's not like there's a shortage of jobs or something...