know your friends well, but your enemies better, why the united states will fall Options

[sadolakced acid]

The United States of America.

the promise land?
land of milk and honey?
land of the mountain of gold?

maybe.

yet, like all empires, doomed to fail.

why, you ask? mayhaps it's politics. mayhaps it's terrorists. or mayhaps it's cultural.

So says the old joke, that people who only know one language are americans. This may be true for some, but with more and more high schools requiring foriegn languages, this is slowly changing.

yet to what purpose? sure, we might learn the culture of the romans, the french, the spanish (and mexicans), and the germans. but will this help us in the world?

if we consider the world as a whole, what is the greatest threat to the United States of America? Is it russia? they seem to be fading from the stage, their act over, exiting stage left.

is it the middle east? certainly they are the source for terrorists. Yet what do terrorists do? they kill people. They terrorize. yet this is not what kills a nation. Terrorist's actions unify America, they make it stronger.

then what is the threat?

let's look at recent events.

george bush annouces that the united states will return to the moon by 2019.
and china anounces that they will put a man on the moon by 2018.

a brilliant display of one-up-manship if it's pulled off.

this is a nation that has vast potential, and they are begining to tap it. Sure, there are growing pains, but it means they are growing.

so let's consider this for a second. most every nation, china included, teach thier children to speak english.

To do this, they read american books, learn from american teachers, and watch american movies.

American culture is exported to other countries. yet these countries don't completely ignore thier own culture. the two- american culture and local culture- coexist.

jump to america.

a country where youths make jokes based on racial stereotypes from 100 years ago.

a country where most children's knowledge of chinese is how to say a few bad words.

a country where other cultures are not valued, or studied.

let us look to the future. Is the united states going to be able to sell things to china? not anymore, not with our limited understanding of thier culture.

but they, on the other, they have hundreds of thousands of college graduates who know how to operate in a western buisness world, who know what americans want, and can give it to them for much cheaper.

So what, you ask. Why should it matter?

the answer is staring you in the face. America dominates because america innovates. the internet. automobiles. aeroplanes. all created here.

so what happens when america loses it's innovation? then it's military weapons cease to be the worlds best. It's industry ceases to do things others cannot. It's commerce soon depends on someone else. and it's dominence-- it's dominence fades.

and thus the empire falls.

[sadolakced acid]

I agree totally. Standardize testing is a terrible way to test whether or not you know your stuff.

Also i have to say. Yeah China has put ppl in space...but its not that hard to put someone or something in space. All it takes is a little bit of knowledge in Physics and in Chemistry. I could if i wanted i had hmmmm about 10k put my dog in space. All it takes is some remote control components, Nitrous Oxide(Oxidizer), a homemade fuel which im not posting becuase i dont want ppl tryin it out, and some plumbing fixtures. Its not that difficult.

you're extrapolating information from the wrong areas. the mythbusters made the equivalent of a cruise missile. it could have never gotten to space.

even space ship one hasn't truely gotten to space.

as of now, the only way to reach space and establish orbit is with complicated and expensive liquid fuel rockets. Only three countries have put people in space.

and then you need precise control on your velocity, and you need life support systems, etc.

10k can't put your dog in space, even if it were dead.

Also the only reason China has began to move in a positive direction is because they have opened there boarders again. Think back to around the time of the Vietnam War and you could not freely gettin into China. there Boarders where closed. Like the former USSR. Soo how can you expect sooo many people to be interested in something that for sooo long we have been taught isnt good becuase they are or were communist. It wasnt till my freshmen tear in high school that i learned ne thing on China. Its not totally Americas fault that we dont know ne thing on China when the possiblity of collecting data and information first hand has just resently in the past 40-50 years presented its self possible. If China for so long wasnt soo ethnocentric and keep its boarders open more people would most likely have more knowledge on there culture.

because 40-50 years is a really short time to learn things.

and when has china closed it's borders compeltely and sucessfully?