Thanks for making it a bad thing to have an opinion on something and voice it. This gives me a very bad feeling about you but I will be the more mature person. You should be ashamed of yourself.M
It's absolutely okay to have an opinion. But it's also okay for me to think a lot of opinions in the US are currently scary, silly and not based on the reality of the world I (want to) live in. Posters like nossy and Danny give me a bit of hope, though, because I actually want to like the place.
The thing is, its not the world you live in. I don't know if you've had the opportunity to live in the United States for more than a year but it is drastically different than the world you live in. Its a country of nucleus cities separated by hundreds of miles. You can draw concentric circles around each of those urban nuclei and pretty reliably define the demographics of each ring based on ethnicity and income level. Each of those nuclei are so separate from each other by highways and interstates that they have their own identification, values, and problems. On a larger scale, each state has a similar thing happening. We are a huge group of people who internally have a vast difference in what we believe is right and wrong and this tends to drive people to different ends of the spectrum.
I believe off very limited experience admittedly that each country in Europe is more homogenous in makeup. The urban sprawl is immense and more colloidal. The solution has been more thoroughly mixed if you will due to the limited land available for development and the insanely higher petroleum prices. I get the feeling people are more anchored to their urban center than Americans. A more appropriate comparison is why Texas is different than New York and why Portugal is different than Greece rather than why the USA is different than Germany. You have an apples to oranges comparison of our two countries which is why we don't live in the reality you would like us to.