[Eric]

Originally Posted by steeljack

Sorry Brian , have to disagree with you on this one , writing as an American (though born and bred in Accrington and District) I think Barbs views are a little extreme , No way do I or many other 'left coast/California liberals' think that the US should be the worlds policeman.
What I think most Americans [probably yourself included] want is for our Govt. to look after America first, and at the present time the US is starting to look like the proverbial house of cards .....ready to come crashing down.....
The $ is worth less and less every day compared the Euro/British Pound/ Canadian dollar, due to the cost of the war in Iraq
Inflation a the grocery store is out of control due to the international energy companies encouraging farmers to switch to bio-fuel crops instead of cattle feed grains.
Our balance of payments to China is way out of whack , it's now nearly impossible to buy anything with a 'made in America' label , all the manufacturing jobs have gone .......When I go to the local Sears to buy a pair of Levis I expect them to be American made not some label saying 'assembled in Honduras' , if I need new tires for my truck I want them to come from Akron , not some place in China , knowing that they may blow out at 60 mph. here in California we are building a new Bay Bridge with Federal and State funds, guess where the steel is coming from .... not Pittsburgh Pa. ........no , China ........we longer build our own bridges .
I think most Americans and probably most Brits think the same ....they have been let down by their own elected officals in the name of 'Globalization' with the West being pulled down to third world levels with the excuse being that globalization is raising third world standards , nonsense the only people benefiting are the international Bankers and Multi-national corporations and we are using our militaries [US and UK as proxy mercenaries .
Seems to me there is more than a bit of hypocrisy in some our elected officials when they cry foul when most Americans want to build a wall on our Southern border yet the have no qualms about our number 1 ally in the mid-east building walls and creating 'ghettos' in the west bank and Gaza.

and yep, even as a west coast liberal , I have voted twice for the Austrian guy (Arnold) in State elections.

I think you are right in much of what you say. What America is going thro' now, England went thro' in the late 19th cent. The move from manufacturing to paper shuffling and legal money laundring makes sense for those few well-heeled people who will make money from it, but the workers and the industrial infrastructure suffer.

But there is another point of view: take the automobile for eg., most cars made in the US are, to be kind, pieces of s**t. The work force may complain about the outsourcing of jobs, but if they made better stuff perhaps it would sell. We all know that the best car for the buck is not the chevvy but the Toyota. I think that Admiral Beatty got it right, when , at the Battle of Jutland, he said: "there is something wrong with our bloody ships today." Damn right there was; they were made in England. (On the other hand so were the sailors, much can be made of sub-standard military equipment by superior fighting men).