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Originally posted by Moiraine:
Problem, Nachtrafe, is to set the line between giving a hand and intruding.
Reading your post, an image came into my mind, an image from an Italian movie of the sixties, don't remember which : A child had done a prank, so his father starts yelling at him, so his mother starts yelling at the father, so all the family starts chasing each others and yelling at the top of their lungs. Then a guy arrives and tries to stop them. Then all the family together start chasing the guy and yelling at the top of their lungs ! [img]smile.gif[/img]
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[img]graemlins/laugh3.gif[/img] [img]graemlins/biglaugh.gif[/img] That's hilarious! [img]smile.gif[/img] I saw something similiar a long time ago on some black and white movie. Cracked me up.
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As my father's family is the Italian kind, we all yell a lot. In fact, in a family meeting, the more shouting aloud, the more happiness ! When someone stops yelling, it usually means something is wrong with him. But suppose, say, a Swedish guy comes around. As in his culture people yell only when things are very bad, he would be appalled and possibly try to calm things down ... which noone wants him to do ! [img]smile.gif[/img]
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The problem is, we're not *just* talking about shouting. If people in other countries want to get angry with one another...that's fine. You dont see the US jumping into British elections, or even into Iraqi 'elections'(even though the latter are a joke). It's when it gets beyond just shouting and being loud and turns into armed conflict that it becomes a problem.
And heck...sometimes we even let that go. Other sovreign countries are allowed to have their internal problems. And sometimes those problems even spill over into other sovreign nations. And again...we(the US) generally are even willing to let that go, unless we have a mutual assistance treaty with the attacked nation.
But when another nation asks for help, or one group is being 'ethnically cleansed'...well, are we not honour bound, again, by simple compassion, to help? The U.S. spends more money on foreign aid than ANY OTHER NATION ON EARTH(I'm talking raw dollars, not percentages)! That's pure compassion. Are you going to denegrate us for being compassionate to our fellow human beings?
There are a great many of your fellow Europeans who are more than willing to do just that.
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It is in your culture to want to act as soon as you perceive there is a need. It is in our culture to be wary of possible intrusion and its consequences. Both viewpoints are useful - together. That's what the U.N. is about, IMO. [img]smile.gif[/img]
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Well...let me offer you an analogy. I'm no mechanic, but, I have owned several cars(and some of them were even those 'evil' 4 wheel drive types [img]tongue.gif[/img] ). And I *know* that it's a heck of a lot cheaper to practice preventative maintainence than to wait for the engine to seize up and replace it.
Now, I understand where you're coming from about culture differences Moraine, but, given the option, I'd much rather jump the gun and make a 'interfere'(and even be villified by the finger pointers of the world), rather than give a madman the chance to 'cleanse' millions. Just my opinion though.
Erm...and dont even get me started on the UN. The only thing the UN is good at is sitting on it's collective thumb and flapping it's collective lips. Period.
[ 10-29-2002, 01:53 PM: Message edited by: Nachtrafe ]