>BBC? As you know I don't have a high opinion of the US media. So basically the only unbiased news you've got is through the BBC? To clarify, since europe is so small, we have a lot of foreign news on the TV, esspecially anything in our neighbourhood (UK, benelux, France and Germany).

No, not just the BBC, I check out a number of English websites at least weekly. Occasionally Australian, or other European ones provided they are in English.

And I would hardly call the BBC unbiased.

>Funny enough, I do not know much about Canada...

One side of my family was involved in one of the Quebec rebellions. So I sort of have connections to Canada.

>One very good book which I really like is "The rise and fall of great powers" written by "paul? kennedy"

Thanks for the recommendation.

>>I'm not the one making harsh statements here.
>
>Yes you did, You implied that dutch politics differ from much of europe in the sense that we are more left than the others. I don't think that is true.

Well then we're getting a lot of bad information here. The Netherlands is regularly portrayed as one of the most liberal countries in Europe, and not just by the American press.

>Go ahead and read the links. US Liberalism is as far as far as dutch politics is concerned on the absolute right wing, to the right of dutch liberals. Since there is about nothing to the right of that, the conclusion is easily made. Now in one of the links there is a political map of where certain political movements should be place. Examine that and draw your conclusions.

I have, and I stand by my original conclusion.

>>Perhaps if you had made a comment in that regards, you would have contributed something useful to the discussion.
>
>I said this:
>I've made a statement before up here, that is both liberal and republican is far to the right of anything accepted in other countries (including canada).

>So I clearly define the relativity of left and right here depending from which country you look at. Now I can't help it when people don't read what I say here. You could have known my statement was relative to the country you're comparing to. But OTOH one of the links implies there is an absolute definition of left and right (map). If you interpretate that map to US politics one could easily draw the conlcusion that there is no significant left wing in the US.
>

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-Right_politics. If we accept that as a basis for comparing left and right, then there is clearly a left to American politics. While the article on rationalrevolution.com was interesting, an examination of other articles on that site tells me the author is definitely a leftist. Since he's an American, by his own definition he must not exist.

>And that is exactly what I'm trying to point out here. Indeed the US had not to rebuild it as it served quite well. However, this also is a disadvantage in that there is an attitude of "It served us well in the past, so it will serve us well in the future". But these are different times.

What you seem to forget is that we are governed by the Constitution and a body of law that has evolved over the course of time. While there have been a lot of changes over time, our basic system of government works. Yes, we've evolved into a two-party system, but there is nothing preventing a third party from being established.

You also seem to forget that the parliamentary system dates back to the 1700's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Parliamentarism). Our forefathers must have had reservations about it - not surprising in view of what they knew about the government they just fought - and decided on a slightly different version.

>What do you think is the opposite of generalisation ?? Can you draw conclusions on that? In order to draw conlcusions you must generalise to a certain degree or else you'll be falling into the trap of details. (Since you attacked me previously on these issue, note that we are talking relatives again).

The opposite of generalization is realism - understanding that the world is not black and white. A generalist says there's no left in America. A realist understands that there is, but it isn't as active or as vocal as it once was. Most of America has rejected the ultra-left politics of the 1960's, but there still is a Communist party over here.