Re: Ooops...

Jenesis wrote:
>We're not calling ourselves by continents, we're calling ourselves by the
>name of our country.
Which just happens to be based on the name of the continents ... calling the
country "The United States of America" was a bit disingenous in the first
place since they only covered a fraction of the Americans, but I guess there
were good political reasons back then, and besides in those days they were
the only non-colony society there, except for some Red Indian societies that
didn't count.

>I don't want to belong to a continent; I don't have
>that much in common with all the other countries, let alone everyone in my
>own.  As far as whether or not Americans are educated as to world matters,
>I
>think the answer is obvious (check out the Japan episode of the Simpsons,
>and
>the dinner at Americatown).  But don't think the rest of the world is any
>better, or ever has been.
We-ell, if you live in a small country like Sweden you HAVE to to have some
knowledge of the outside world, since that is always pretty close. The USA
is so big that it can rely on itself to a much higher degree. Also, in
Europe school systems usually pays more attention to foreign countries than
does those of the USA. But if looking for people how're really lost on the
outside world, you should probably go to some poor African country, the kind
were 20% of children go to school.

>  Look at all the languages that have been destroyed
>by empires.  What about Spain, where, according to their government, Basque
>is a "dialect" of Spanish.  I don't think America is any worse than most of
>the rest of the world.
Well, neither do I - not that this is much of a compliment. But how do it
relate to relative ignorance of the world outside your borders?

                                                     Andreas
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