Peg Kerr's Journal

I don't think I'd qualify. As a skilled worker I'd have to have two college degrees or a PHD (rather than the one BA and 2yr certificate I have), a confirmed offer of employment in Canada, and a second language or family connection in Canada in order to get enough points - according to the chart on the site you cite. Plus they knock off points if you're over 49 or under 21.

I'm kind of touched by the 17%. It's like they've picked up some tiny smattering of scientific knowledge somewhere and are really striving to make sense of things but not quite getting it. Or, you know, they have a vague memory of learning something in school about the earth rotating and the sun and days, and this is the best they can do with it. This kind of weird fragmentary "knowledge" is probably not at all specific to the US.

As for the people living in the geocentric solar system, I just don't know. This sounds more like some sort of religious strangeness.

I got the feeling that the article was not intended to make Americans feel bad but instead to be a kind of reality check. I certainly don't think America is disgusting. I think that the people are terrific, the society in general is pretty good, and that the current government sucks :-). I think the takeaway from this is to realize where things can be improved and then go and improve them.

You have a point. I guess, I would be proud to live in Ireland or Canada or Britain or Scotland (or many other countries for that matter, but as the only other language I have much knowledge of is Arabic, I couldn't express my pride very well or live very easily in many other countries) so I don't see what wrong with being content to live in America. When I say that America is not the best it's because I think that if our country treated EVERYONE equally and provided health care to all we'd be a heck of a lot closer to the top than we are now. But there are places I could live other than here which would also be a lot worse. While queer people like us didn't have the same rights as straight people until recently (and I'm 20 so I know that I haven't had enough life experience to equate mysself with you on this one, and I'm not trying to) it has still been a better place to live than a lot of the world, where we could be killed for not being straight. I'm not well traveled, so maybe I just don't know it, but I don't feel like French people or British or Chinese or Indonesian or Egyptian people write in their newspapers or get on their computers and talk about all of the ways that their country sucks, so I don't believe that it is necessary for us to take on the mantle of detesting America because some of our fellow citizen are obnoxious enough to loudly proclaim it the best.

And I agree about the school spirit level of patriotism, I just don't like to think that liberals are the students who never get involved in the school and who sit in the very back bleachers at the pep rally sneering at the cheerleaders because the football team gets more money than the science club.

I don't think most people are like that, like I said, it wasn't addressed to anyone here, but I know many people like that. Most of LJ seems to be quite politically involved, however, and trying to fix things rather than simply looking down upon them.