I don't know. My experience seems to suggest that Americans are fairy ignorant of other nation's restrictive laws, giving rise to the belief that other nations are uniformly at least as liberal or more liberal than the U.S.

During the 60s and 70s quite a number young U.S. nationals discovered that other countries weren't nearly so lax in areas like drug enforcement or foreigners working as they thought.

C

----- Original Message -----
From: "Dan Drake"
Date: Mon, 28 Jun 2004 18:26:06 +0000 (UTC)
To: wikien-l@wikipedia.org
Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Rules vs. Anarchy

> On Sat, 26 Jun 2004 03:47:23 UTC, Ray Saintonge
> wrote:
>
> >
> > Americans are essentially a law-abiding peoples, and would sacrifice
> > common sense to ensure that the law is enforced.
>
> I do wish we could reduce the amount of nationalist sniping and worse than
> useless generalities.
>
> Another thing Americans like to do: Laugh scornfully at other countries'
> rigid bureaucacies mindlessly enforcing the letter of massive, intrusive,
> and stupid laws and regulations. (Since some people can't imagine an
> American saying anything that is not shallow and dogmatic, I need to
> explain that those opinions of other countries' adminis trations are not
> necessarily *true*; just that that's a perception, not necessarily less
> valid than the one cited above.)
>
> --
> Dan Drake
> dd@dandrake.com
> http://www.dandrake.com
>
> Whoever tries to imagine perfection simply reveals his own emptiness.
> --George Orwell
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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