permaculture

[Toby Hemenway <hemenway@jeffnet.org>]

I've stayed out of this thread since it's pretty OT, but I'll add this, since Bob--whose posts I generally agree with and enjoy--avoided giving the genesis of "Amerikan."

> The reason I spell Amerikan this way is because I used to spell it this
> way until the end of the Vietnam War as a way of not insulting the other
> people who live on the continent 

(It sure insults people in the US, though! ) Back in the Nixon era, as a clever, angry college boy, I used the "Amerika" spelling, too. The Left originally inserted the Germanic  "k"  to link the US gov't to the Nazis. But:

> Amerikan schools - it appears to me that if Amerikan kids

Equating all the people in the US, or our schools and children, with the Nazis is a very deep insult. And using "Amerika" is a bit like using "nigger": It's a potentially mortal insult when used by outsiders. I kinda resent being called a Nazi. If I were to twist your country's name into a fascist analogy or some other insult, I'd be the target of some well-deserved anger too. So how about if we avoid nationalist, ethnic, and cultural slurs here? That's where the "bigotry" charge originated--using a negative term, associated with Nazism, to describe an entire nation. 

Oh, and did anyone notice that, in the article cited by Keith, the aluminum/barium scare originated in Canada, not the US? 

BTW, I plead guilty to the charge of living in a self-centered nation. Much of what goes on outside the US has no effect that the average American can feel, and is not reported in our news (the average person's source of info).  We're also about the only major power that's a couple thousand miles from any other, so international events reach us only with great muffling. (That's why Europeans are so damn savvy, all those jostling countries!) And the near-constant warring in much of Europe from 1870-1945 only encouraged our isolation--the majority of Americans wanted no part of it, and still don't. Our isolationism is also a testimony to how stable the US is. Most citizens feel safe enough to ignore everything, even domestic politics, that doesn't bump them in the nose. Foolish, but understandable.  

If Mexico and Canada were Great Powers, I'd bet Americans would speak some Spanish and French. And if all Europe spoke only English, would Europeans really learn other languages? An entity only responds to influences that directly affect it. It may annoy those in other countries that the US is so self-centered (and Bush has taken it to a sickening, dangerous extreme), but it's perfectly logical. 

Toby
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