the world strongly dislikes your government, and likes your culture...to a point.
More or less true, but the world doesn't know much about the former. At all.
America's biggest problem is it's failure to communicate effectivily enough really...
Well America isn't actually a whole lot more religious than a lot of other western/industrialised countries; the difference is that the social pressure of attending church every sunday hasn't collapsed in America... one reason is actually the *lack* of state-church which has enabled the organisations of other churches to be impressivily strong.
Yes; those things are cultural
All of which are reasonably similer to those of the various countries that provided the immigrants to the US
Er... no. The rest of the west rather obviously hasn't moved away from religion (not sure where you got that idea from). The death penalty has been abolished in most western countries, true, but the population in many of them wouldn't mind it being brought back and the culture of gun ownership isn't something the rest of the west has moved away from; it's something it never had.
I don't think America has been trying to force anything like that down the rest of the west's collective throats at all... that a lot of people act is if it is says something about the sort of pathetic inferiority complex and/or jealousy towards America's power that's soooooooooo obvious with a lot of people nowadays
Except that the rest of the west isn't especially progressive and certainly hasn't been getting more so recently. Note the %'s far right parties are polling in most western countries. In the "progressive" Netherlands the LPF ended up in Government for a while. Le Pen has the loyalties of a similer proportion of the "progressive" French electorate as the LibDems do of the British electorate. The "progressive" French population support viciously bigoted laws against minority groups (hey the Americans stopped doing that 40 odd years ago).
Nice post Al.
About the only thing I have to add is that on the issue of religion that most of the rest of the planet
outside the west is closer to the American position than the 'progressive western' (read: secular) position. I may have to see if I can dig up a link to a fascinating bit Slate had on the graffiti in Iraq...one of the lines that struck me was one which indicated that at least some devout (but not fanatical) Muslims prefer a devout 'believer' (read: Person of the Book) such as George W. Bush to a secularist psuedo-Muslim such as Saddam Hussein. That's an angle that you don't hear about much...
