Traditional marriage supporters must write J.U.D.E.N. on their window

[Sqrl]

mixer82 said:

Sqrl said:

Yes....because as a country we should conduct ourselves in a manner that protects us from being ...gasp....made fun of.  Lord knows that is the most important thing we can do. 

PS - Since you don't seem to be, I'll be embarrassed for you that such a shallow remark was the only thing you could add to the discussion. A tip for next time: A substantive post about your position on the topic goes a lot further than claiming to speak for "the rest of the world".

No, as a country you should try to behave well enough that when you travel abroad your not given the advice to fly another countrys flag on you person. I have heard many instances where you yanks have used the maple leaf as not to get treated like shit while in europe.

Again anecdotes are not facts - and even then this joke of claiming to be canadian has been in the standup routine of several lefty comedians for a while now (as I remember hearing it with Bush Sr. and Clinton).  The entire point is baseless because we have no idea how prevalent this is, if it even occurs at a level worth mentioning at all.  You've taken this anecdote/joke and spun it into a weak argument by simply stating that "some people do this".  Well sorry but people do a lot of things, it doesn't mean it applies universally.

Either way, you're essentially saying that a country should account for the lack of graciousness and hospitality of other countries and adjust their foreign policy to agree with the views of those foriegn countries in order to avoid their ire while on vacation.  A concept that is plainly ridiculous.  You let your citizenry figure out that those people are rude and they eventually stop going to a place that clearly doesn't want their tourist dollars.

The bottom line is that the United States is a soveriegn country, you don't have to like that it acts in its own interests, but you're naive if you're surprised that it does.  Europeans and anyone else can react to that however they want but treating tourist "like shit" seems to me a pretty tasteless way to respond.  If your assertion that this is prevalent is in fact true, I would take away that Europeans have a lot to learn about how to treat people.  In all honesty though I doubt very much that Europeans are as rude as you suggest.  Of course I've only met a few dozen or so and I won't be so absurd to think I can extrapolate a few examples to account for the entire population.