That seems like a pretty low bar for "not civilized", which is a seriously bad characterization, and some of those are downright bizarre. It reads as though you took a laundry list of things you don't like about the US and decided that that's your definition of "not civilized". Would it make any sense if I pointed out that Europe tends to have weaker freedom of speech than the US, and a higher tendency towards anti-Semitism, and higher taxes, therefore Europe is "not civilized"?
If "uncivilized" means anything it has to mean something other than "has policies I hate". And defining it to mean "has policies that I hatem and which hurt people" is no good--everyone thinks that policies that they hate hurt people, so that collapses down to just "has policies I hate".
BTW, do you consider Japan to be uncivilized? It has the death penalty.
(My own theory on how Japan manages to keep the death penalty is that it's easy for activists in Europe to connect to activists in nearby countries where some people are bilingual, but hard to connect with activists on the other side of the world who have no languages in common.)
That seems like a pretty low bar for "not civilized", which is a seriously bad characterization, and some of those are downright bizarre. It reads as though you took a laundry list of things you don't like about the US and decided that that's your definition of "not civilized". Would it make any sense if I pointed out that Europe tends to have weaker freedom of speech than the US, and a higher tendency towards anti-Semitism, and higher taxes, therefore Europe is "not civilized"?
It was a bad choice of word. But it seems like...
Another month has passed and here is a new rationality quotes thread. The usual rules are: