Your idea of freedom interests me rmepig69 seeing as your whole system is based around corporate influence that in turn pushes and influences each of your presidential candidates...freedom?...how many millions does it take to push for president and run a campaign? where does this money come from? And if someone more clever than Bush is more appropiate for the job (shouldn't be too hard, a chimp from a zoo maybe?) how do they stand a chance with a £800 a week job? Your idea of freedom is complete bullshit, CNN, GM Autos, Shell, etc etc.
Europe doesn't have such a lethal combination of money and power on a vast scale that can control elections and national policy at will. Remember that George Bush spent over $200 million to get himself elected two years ago, and even Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York spent 60 million dollars for his election: this scarcely seems like the democracy to which other nations might aspire, much less emulate. But this is accepted uncritically by what seems to be an enormous majority of Americans who equate all this with freedom and democracy, despite its obvious drawbacks. More than any other country today, the United States is controlled at a distance from most citizens; the great corporations and lobbying groups do their will with "the people's" sovereignty leaving little opportunity for real dissent or political change. Democrats and Republicans, for example, voted to give Bush a blank check for war with such enthusiasm and unquestioning loyalty as to make one doubt that there was any thought in the decision. The ideological position common to nearly everyone in the system is that America is best, its ideals perfect, its history spotless, its actions and society at the highest levels of human achievement and greatness. To argue with that -- if that is at all possible -- is to be "un-American" and guilty of the cardinal sin of anti- Americanism, which derives not from honest criticism but for hatred of the good and the pure.