[ambrafoxtrot]

been living many years in the States, many years in EU, half of my family here, half there, and I hold both citizenships. Tell you guys what. The Euros don't have a clue on what making a country from scratch is like. All of their nation states, have been made from above; by the elites. The yanks, on the other hand, made the US from bottom up. THEY THE PEOPLE built the country from nothing. They grabbed land from wild beasts, from the natives and transformed wilderness into civilization BY THEMSELVES...single families did it. the US government has always been one or two steps behind hard working people, trying to regulate what THE PEOPLE had already secured. The Euros don't understand what that means. They have been given their land, their civilization and all, as a perk created by their elites; that is why they have the welfare bull embedded in their brains as standard way of life. On the other hand, the Americans have a different attitude towards human organizations. They think COMMUNITY, not government. Unfortunately for them, things are rapidly changing in the States. The freakin government is becoming (both parties) more like the European ones, but THEY THE PEOPLE are reluctant to accept that. The weapons issue falls right into this area. It's a cultural thing. People not used to be helped by governments, reatain in their cultural DNA the convincition that they have to think for themselves, self defense included. In general, I think Americans have the better (more functional) way of thinking: Self responsibility, reliability, credibility, used to be the values that made Americans the most productive, most paid and ultimately happiest people in the world for about a century. The ancient romans had a peak like that, fueled more or less by the same values. I Strongly believe that if America completely loses these values, then America is on its way to the end, and the world will experience more harsh masters again, provided that America will accept to go down silently like UK did. Not at all a certainty.
greetings
ambrafoxtrot.

p.s. I and my group are playing again (after 1 year) the tale'o war twilight 2000 game. Updates on that thread soon to come.