Dan Drake wrote,
Well, I wasn't trying to start a discussion of what Americans are really like; quite the reverse. But I think both of these positions are largely right, as was the one I expressed before. Here's the amazing, unheard-of secret: not all Americans think alike all the time. That was the point of my post.
Still, consider this: a person may believe that his country does something better than most of the world does (to be concrete, let's take the matter of having an independent judiciary that is largely in the hands of people who understand the concept of due process of law and even approve of it), and he may even be right; but when he comes face to face with the places that really are worse, the reality may be shocking. Thus I reconcile the two positions.
Dan, would you please weave this insight into a Wikipedia article about America or Americans? Or start a new article called [[American concepts of justice]]? Or maybe put this into [[independent judiciary]], as part of a series on [[American government]]?
I think it's important for the Wikipedia articles to reflect that fact that many Americans take just the attitude you described above:
that America "does something better than most of the world does" by "having an independent judiciary that is largely in the hands of people who understand the concept of due process of law and even approve of it"
Ed Poor