re: .

quote:

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no apathy is great. If you're happy being miserable, Europe is fantastic

did I also mention that there is no free speech in France and Germany?

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None? Where did you get that information? I am sure that the French and Germans would be interested.

Of course there is free speech in Germany and Europe....there are some restrictions that we would never stand for in the US but we do not have totally free speech in the US either.

You are correct however that speech is limited more so in Germany at least. For example it is illegal to flip someone a bird....because it is rude. That is so fricking stupid because Germans make all sorts of hand gestures in place of flipping someone off. Americans living in Germany get charged with this 'crime" pretty regularly....I know a full bird Marine Colonel whose wife was deported for being arrested for flipping folks off on several occasions. My wife was given a warning ticket for doing the same thing. Not exactly a hard thing to live without BUT it is childish, in my opinion.

Another law that the Germans are dead serious about is wearing anything or writing anything or saying anything that can in any way glorify the Third Reich and National Socialism. Like most laws of this nature it is selectively applied....in parts of Berlin there are LOTS of skinheads who sport Swastika tattoos and for the most part they are ignored UNTIL they get arrested for something else and then they are usually charged for it....sometimes it sticks and sometimes it does not, for various reasons.

Europeans are far from miserable though. Most of Europe is a paradise for the middle class with fantastic health care systems, very liberal labor laws and a very high standard of living. All of this is made possible by US Taxpayers....I know ya'll like to dismiss this fact out of hand because is counter to the narrative that entitlement programs and high taxes are the reason that the US economy is not in the best of health but everything that makes Europe a middle class paradise is subsidized by you....without that subsidy there would not be the health care systems, the progressive labor laws ARE the standard of living. This truth is what makes Europeans so smug. Like children through out time Europeans love Mama and Daddy's house, car, food, cable TV and internet connection but feel that Mama and daddy are too stupid to understand why they (the kids) are so much smarter than the parents.

Again I know ya'll won't buy this because it is much more comforting to blame the problems in the US on Americans, especially the poor and the lower middle class. It is difficult to understand the benefits that Europe and the entire world enjoy at the expense of American tax payers and the nuance of this does not fit well on a bumper sticker. Not like a diatribe against food stamps anyway....