I disagree. It's clear to me that America and the rest world have become increasingly free and wealthy over the last 100 years due to cheap oil.

Look at the whole picture. Compare the world to 100 years ago. For the majority of people on this planet is there MORE:
- slavery
- suffrage for women
- lifespan
- freedom from religion
- rape
- tooth decay
- probability of being killed by a government
- infant mortality
- physical abuse of children
- literacy
- disease
- travel
- communication
- back-breaking physical labor

...or LESS.
The human condition for the majority has improved. The question is, will it continue to improve, or will it revert.

That question boils down to respect for human rights. The most basic human right is the right of property, of self-ownership. All the improvments above have resulted from greater respect for the right of people to be free from violence to their most valued personal possession, themselves.

Work to help people understand that initiating violence is wrong, and that property rights are sacred and beneficial.

Actually, I would call something stupid or intelligent without regard to something else.

Dictionary.com

Only one of the five definitions ever needs a reference point. Just like there can be red without non-red colors (based off of wavelength) or a square without non-squares (based of length and number of sides), so can there be stupid without intelligent. If everyone is "2. characterized by or proceeding from mental dullness; foolish; senseless: a stupid question.
3. tediously dull, esp. due to lack of meaning or sense; inane; pointless: a stupid party.
4. annoying or irritating; troublesome: Turn off that stupid radio.
5. in a state of stupor; stupefied: stupid from fatigue.",
then there aren't some people in that group that wouldn't be identified as stupid, they'd all be stupid based off of the definition.

Let's use your analogy: food. If you've never had oatmeal, and then you eat oatmeal for the first time, is it not possible to say that it tastes bad? Of course, you may be referencing it to other foods.

Let's say that you are a created being in your current form and age. You've never had any memory nor experience of eating oatmeal. You eat oatmeal and it's your first meal ever. Is it the case that this bowl of oatmeal can only be described as bland or neutral (since you have nothing to compare it to and thus can't be good or bad)? Of course not. The "goodness" or "badness" of the oatmeal will be based off of you sensation of the oatmeal's compounds striking your nerves on your tongue. If the oatmeal is extremely salty, then it doesn't matter that you've never had anything to compare it to; you'll still think that it's crap. If it's sweet, then you'll enjoy it.

Good and bad don't need a reference point. Just like you don't need Hitler to realize that helping someone out is good, you don't need an Einstein to realize that Joe 6-Pack is not that bright.

So you're comparing me to racists? Thanks

As for the "exceptions prove the rule", I said that kind of tongue-in-cheek. Should've put a smiley. Of course everything is more complex than what can be laid out on a forum. But that doesn't change the fact that for the vast majority of Americans and in every corner of the US, this does apply: even to us in one shape or another.

The term I was thinking of was fallacy of composition.

So you are going to say that the US is not dominated by symbolism? That people don't have orgasms over the words "Change" "Hope" and "Country First"? That we aren't a society dominated by nearly everyone wearing clothes with their designers' logos on them?

Or that we live in a "now" society where if we don't get what we want, we'll kill for it? If you haven't noticed, that happens just about every Christmas season. People can't wait for the new gizmo, so they trample a person to death for it. Yeah, that doesn't happen in this country.

You've yet to disprove anything that Kristen nor Hermit has said, only to say that others do it as well. But that doesn't change the fact that we do also.

It depends on your reference point. If you look back the past hundred years, sure, we're better off. But you could've done that during the World Depression One and concluded that the world wasn't in too bad a situation since our economy was still better than 100 years prior.

But if you look back to only the past 40-50 years or less, then it's quite clear that we've been going downhill. We have more people entering slavery (real and debt-based). More people starving to death. More religious tyranny (rise of the Religious Right, "Islamic" regimes in the ME replacing secular ones, etc.) Less property rights (overuse of eminent domain). Failure of our public schools - we went from putting a man on the moon in 10 years to "maybe we can beat Madagascar in math and science scores this year".

Long term, we've done well. But the future outlook is very bleak based on our recent performance.

Ecological fallacy.

Edit to add: taking something that is true of the individual and applying it at the group level.

Since I do not have time to engage further for a couple of days I will leave the field to you only adding that if I talked about the increased pathological violence orientation of arab culture (a culture that I would contend is more unified than this mosiac called america)... or if I just said "Muslims are stupid" I would be guilty of gross over-simplification.

And if I said things like:
1. They're a people with an insatiable preoccupation with sex.

2. They are hypnotized by constant repetition of three worded catch phrases that contain the word "Allah."

3. They are bombarded with constant symbols and suggestions. Look around the room and count the number of Koran quotes you can see.

4. Everything is anger and angrier. Their minds are preoccupied with every grievence (real and imagined) of the last 1000 years. Everytime you turn on the TV they are chanting death to someone. They can't just sit still and think.

5. They are afraid of change.

6. People are executed when they "don't fit in" with society.

oh, and,

7. The exceptions just prove the rule.

I think it would be greeted with a little more critical thought than the "Americans are stupid" catch-phrase.


Link But some stereotypes are more popular than others and Lord forgive us if we are not willing to surrender our own while demanding that others give up their's.

someone just emailed me this (sorry no link)
Explaining America to Russians by Thomas W. Chittum
Letter to the Editor The Nationalist Times, March 2008, page 7:

In 1996 I wrote a book explaining why America would break up in a second civil war. My book, Civil War Two, is now being translated into Russian for sale as an ebook there. Below is my attempt to explain America to Russians. The English language of my book can be purchased at http://amfirstbooks.com.
First I will introduce myself. I grew up in a small farming village in the state of Illinois. I was an infantry soldier in the American army and fought for a year in the jungles of Vietnam. After that undeclared and unconstitutional war, I worked as a computer programmer for many years. In 1996 I wrote “Civil War Two.” It predicted that America would break apart after a civil war that would be similar to the civil war that had torn apart Yugoslavia a few years earlier.

Now I will introduce Americans. Americans are so stupid they can’t remember anything longer than what you can put on a bumpersticker. “Save the Whales.” “I Got Mine.” “Nuke Iran.” “I Love My Pet Hamster.” Stupidity is the only thing that unites so-called Americans. That’s all you really have to remember about Americans. Without our one common trait of stupidity Americans have no basis for a national identity whatsoever. The establishment arranges these bumpersticker slogans into an infinite variety of combinations which they then sell back to the ravenous peasants in the form of movies, political parties, cults, lifestyles, TV programs, and even religions.
Now I will introduce our economy. All the previously mentioned garbage is paid for by a world-wide campaign of butchery and looting. By the way, Russia is right at the top of the list of nations due for another round of plundering.
Now I will introduce America. Officially, America was founded as a confederation of 13 independent states, each retaining their individual sovereignty. Actually it was a huge real estate swindle led by Masonic slave drivers in the South and Masonic merchants in the North. At first, the establishment in London resisted with the ham-fisted use of Hessian mercenaries who were rented to the British by a German nobleman, Wilhelm IX, and a banker, Mayer Amschel Rothschild. Later in the war a different faction of the establishment in London decided to allow us formal independence while regaining covert control by financial means.
At the same time that the British were attacking the Americans, their own establishment, consisting of landed aristocrats, was being infiltrated by banking families. The landed aristocrats were self-indulgent ninnies like George III, who wanted a world-wide British Empire. The banking families like the Rothschilds were more insightful, and eventually hijacked the British Empire from the aristocratic idiots. The bankers’ victory was finalized after World War II, when the British flag was pulled down around the world. However, the end of formal empire did not end the London-centered banking empire, which kept going without a pause.
After independence was granted, the 13 states re-formed as a single constitutional republic in order to form a more powerful central government, and for resisting anticipated British counter-attacks.
Thus America was hatched, and like a baby alligator it began devouring everything in its vicinity exactly as planned. The military line of least resistance led us straight west. Unfortunately for the rest of the world the vast abundance of this conquered territory has been entirely gobbled up, hence the desperate assault on overseas oil fields. Unfortunately for America, the military expense of plundering foreigners is getting to be more than the market value of the loot.
America does not have any actual history because every major event was the outcome of manipulation of us by the establishment in London. The London puppet masters always manipulated both sides of every dispute here in America. Currently, they select the candidates of both major political parties, and we are therefore effectively under total control of the London establishment.
As a result of this control, America is certain to continue looting the globe until we cross some line and we provoke a serious shooting war with either Russia or China or both. American military officers may step in and demand that our politicians stop this insanity, but even if they do they will not be able to stop the ongoing economic crash. That will set the stage for the most bizarre civil war ever in human history.
Meanwhile, our glorious imperial legions are being blasted into mincemeat and radiated by depleted uranium, thus guaranteeing by design that any sane remnants of our military officers will be unable to stop the chaos and coast-to-coast butchery of our second civil war because they will have no army at all. The military forces of all empires are always constructed primarily for shaping internal events. In our case, that means they must vanish, so they were sent to the other side of the globe to catch Osama bin Subcontractor.
Mr. Subcontractor is a fictional creation that the magicians at the Tavistock Institute pulled out of a hat. The Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, the Council for National Policy, the Bilderbergers, the Pilgrims Society, and Zionists beyond counting have all agreed that our military must not come home until they catch Mr. Subcontractor. Mr. Subcontractor – who is either dead or vacationing in Switzerland – must be carted and dragged in chains down Pennsylvania Avenue. It’s all a circus for the peasants. It’s all TV rubbish meant to camouflage the utter destruction of our military, followed by a catastrophic civil war here.
If Russia and China stand together, they may save most of the Eurasian continent, but the rest of the planet will be trashed back to a depopulated stone age just like America.

Thomas W. Chittum
Linden, New Jersey

False and true. If you were to talk about a general process within Arab society, then you'd likely be correct, although I couldn't say for sure. However, you should be able to hypothesize and then test that hypothesis with an analysis of the culture throughout recent history. If it comes out true, then it's not a "gross over-simplification." It's simply accurate. If it's false, then again, it's not an oversimplification, it's simply false.

To simply back away from making a statement like that if it's true is to succumb to political correctness while it's factually correct.

Same thing with the stupidification of America. Either the country as a whole has gotten dumber and more complacent or it hasn't. I don't think that you can honestly say that we as a country haven't gotten dumber.

What you are doing is the same thing that many people do. You're taking a factual result and, because you don't like the result (that America is becoming dumber), you sensationalize it in order to insinuate that we're saying "Americans are dumb". Then you try to emotionalize the argument by bringing my estimated race and religion into the mix. You do both of these because you know that you can't argue that the US hasn't gotten dumber so you try to argue around it.

You are correct that saying something like "Muslims are stupid" is a simplification. However, if you were to say that Muslims are stupid compared to Jews. That's likely true based off of IQ scores and personal experience. That's not to say that Muslims are intellectually less gifted, just that they've been hampered more through authoritarian and oppressive governments and occupations. I think the entire Muslim world has like 8 Nobel Prize winners: one of those being Yasser Arafat.

Has anybody said that "Americans are stupid"? No. We're saying that America is getting dumber. That's a progression of a nation. It's a simple empirical analysis that anyone with a basic understanding of statistics and the bell curve can understand.

Anything the government subsidizes increases.

When we subsidize sloth, malinvestment, and stupidity, is it any wonder that such things will increase?

http://www.youtube.com/v/pyVNlvzzSFA&hl=en&fs=1

There is some truth to that. I can't cite any off the top of my head, but I've articles about testing standards slipping, etc. I've also read that average IQ has declined over the years.

Now, in the face of lower IQ scores, they've come up with a new nonsense -- EMOTIONAL intelligence. lol

Are we more stupid than our parents? Maybe. One thing I am sure of; over the last thirty years, we have gotten more successful at testing ever larger portions of our population. Therefore, our test scores have declined. As our population gets larger, our bottom quartile gets larger. A few million idiots can make there presence felt. Some of them even vote.

I'm talking about our test scores for things like math and science, not intelligence. We're going up against third world nations and coming out the loser. These are the nations that are supposed to be in the bottom quintile yet they still beat us.

Also, as we test more, our bottom quartile does increase. But so does our upper quartile, thus negating much of the decrease from the bottom quartile. However, this also happens in other countries. So it doesn't explain our decline in test scores against other nations.

Back in '98...

Freedom and creative thinking? Yeah, we can't get the plumbing to work but we can sure as hell write a good movie script.

the kids on Mindanoa have American kids beat with regards to school hands down. We are a nation of virtual functional illiterates.

"Gee, Mr. Chittum. Why don't you tell us what you Really think!"

Remember what it was like when you taught your first year out of college and flunked a third of your class. Those high standards lasted through the first nine week grading period. Then the principal stepped in and reminded you that if a third of your class had failed to pass, you had failed to teach. A miracle happened and grades went up.

Cloud9, are you a teacher? My wife is a teacher, but refuses to teach in the US for a number of reasons; foremost "American children are brats".