Desrtopa comments on Are Your Enemies Innately Evil? - Less Wrong

88 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 26 June 2007 09:13PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (133)

Sort By: Old

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Desrtopa 28 March 2013 07:28:23PM *  7 points [-]

The United States is renowned as a beacon of freedom.

The United States is probably number one in the world for using freedom as a buzzword, but amongst first world nations, the United States really doesn't stand out for freedom at all. If we're talking about legally favoring actual liberties over paternalism, not "freedom" as an applause light, countries like the Netherlands stand out ahead of the U.S.

What the U.S. does stand out for among first world nations is being big and powerful and throwing its weight around, which is, in fact, exactly what the terrorists in question attest to actually taking issue with.