http://www.theonion.com/content/node/46227

New Poll Finds 86 Percent Of Americans Don’t Want To Have A Country Anymore

WASHINGTON, DC—A Gallup/Harris Interactive poll released Monday indicates that nearly nine out of 10 Americans are “tired of having a country.”

Among the 86 percent of poll respondents who were in favor of discontinuing the nation, the most frequently cited reasons were a lack of significant results from the current democratic process (36 percent), dissatisfaction with customer service (28 percent), and exhaustion (22 percent).

“I don’t want to get bogged down in the country anymore,” Wilmington, DE accountant Karie Ashworth said. “I’m not up in arms or anything, I’m just saying it’d be a lot easier for everyone if we just gave it up.”

Of those who were against maintaining an American nation, 77 percent said they believe that having a country is “counter to the best interests of Americans.” Twelve percent said “the time and effort citizens spend on the country could be better spent elsewhere,” and 8 percent said they just didn’t care.

Roughly 3 percent said we ceased to have a country years ago, and explained that they had been stockpiling weapons to protect their independent compounds.

According to study organizer David Griffith, poll respondents were surprisingly uniform in their opinion that the nation is too much of a hassle.
“I already belong to a health club, a church, and the Kiwanis Club,” Tammy Golden of Los Angeles wrote. “I’m a member of the Von’s Grocery Super Savers, which gets me a discount on certain groceries. These are all well-managed organizations with real benefits. None of them send me a confusing bill once a year and make me work it out myself, then throw me in jail if I get it wrong.”

"I think we've come far enough as a nation that we don't need to have one anymore," Wheldon wrote. "It's not like we're Somalia, where the warlords run everything, or Russia, where it's all organized crime. We've had over 200 years of being Americans. I don't think we still need the United States of America to show us how to do it."

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/46227

3/16/2006 4:57:10 PM

REMEMBER WHEN THE ONION WAS ACTUALLY SOMETHING YOU COULD LOL OVER

3/16/2006 4:59:39 PM

lock

3/16/2006 5:00:34 PM

Man, for second I thought this post was serious...

3/16/2006 5:01:33 PM

^ me too. But only for a second.

3/16/2006 5:06:16 PM

6 years of GWB....sounds about right

3/16/2006 5:08:38 PM

I dunno... doesn't sound like such a bad idea sometimes..



[Edited on March 16, 2006 at 5:09 PM. Reason : haha]

3/16/2006 5:08:44 PM

nah
i enjoy

being safe from foreign governments
eating food i know won't kill me
driving on roads
knowing my job has to be relatively safe
feeling protected from crime and fire
having an education

oh

and being pretty free

all in all
i'll keep this gov't, thanks!

3/16/2006 5:25:56 PM

Quote :

"I dunno... doesn't sound like such a bad idea sometimes.."

Depends on what replaces it. Knowing this country, what would most likely emerge is either a theocratic state or a wasteland wracked by anarchy.

3/16/2006 5:41:35 PM

Quote :

"nah i enjoy being safe from foreign governments eating food i know won't kill me driving on roads knowing my job has to be relatively safe feeling protected from crime and fire having an education"

Uh, woodfoot, you do realize that not a single one of these has anything to do with America the country, right? Every single one of those is already being done for you by your local and state government. The North Carolina National Guard Rocks!!!

3/16/2006 6:19:28 PM

Quote :

"wasteland wracked by anarchy."

3/16/2006 6:20:47 PM

Quote :

"woodfoot, you do realize that not a single one of these has anything to do with America the country"

3/16/2006 6:40:55 PM

yea, i think id rather keep my country

3/16/2006 6:46:21 PM

History must repeat itself, because this guy didn't either:



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Articles_of_the_confederation



[Edited on March 16, 2006 at 7:15 PM. Reason : ...]

3/16/2006 7:14:33 PM

Yesterday We Obeyed Kings And Bent Our Necks To Emperors. Today We Kneel Only To Truth.

3/16/2006 7:46:10 PM

this amused me

3/16/2006 7:47:23 PM

Quote :

"nah i enjoy being safe from foreign governments eating food i know won't kill me driving on roads knowing my job has to be relatively safe feeling protected from crime and fire having an education oh and being pretty free all in all i'll keep this gov't, thanks!"

3/17/2006 6:50:12 PM

[image]http://mattfitt.com/gallery2/d/3144-3/Abolish_Capitalism_Smash_the_State.jpg[/quote]
Shit like this is just irritating.

Without a government, how can you expect anything BUT capitalism?

3/17/2006 7:51:28 PM

They want something called a "Gift Economy", I suspect. In it, you give away everything you produce to people that need/want it, in hopes that others will give you what you need/want but cannot produce. It is completely absurd and there is no mechanism beyond mob tactics to prevent individuals from engaging in barter or even free-market activities.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_economy

BTW, the definition of words must be clarified. It seems people have come to understand capitalism to mean "an enterprise system of government generated monopolies," such as protectionist trade policies, corporate welfare, state-empowered labor unions and trade unions, etc; what used to be called corporatism. I thought capitalism was a good word to use, but polls show you will almost always be misunderstood when you use it. I suspect the definition has been worped by decades of propaganda.

What the anarcho-capitalists suggest you use instead is either "free enterprise" or "free market" until a new word can be devized and disciminated.

3/18/2006 10:48:41 AM

Quote :

"None of them send me a confusing bill once a year and make me work it out myself, then throw me in jail if I get it wrong."

That part is funny.


Because it's true.

3/18/2006 12:02:31 PM

Quote :

"Every single one of those is already being done for you by your local and state government."

I didn't know the FDA was actually a state institution. And I'm sure woodfoot wasn't referencing interstates or large highways when talking about roads. And I'm pretty sure the NC militia could repel foriegn invaders.

[Edited on March 18, 2006 at 1:31 PM. Reason : ]

3/18/2006 1:10:13 PM

I understand that you're trying to make a point, LoneSnark, but I've never understood people who try to use theonion.com articles as the basis for their arguments.

This is like that other thread (by who, I don't remember) that attempted to argue that libertarianism would never work because The Onion had an article about free-lance fire fighters having to call in the city fire department to put out a really bad fire. Since the article is obviously false, it doesn't concretely show anything (except the thread creator's clear bias against libertarianism, maybe).

3/18/2006 1:21:07 PM

reality has a bias against libertarianism

3/18/2006 1:24:53 PM

and i guess local gov'ts dont get shit tons of money through approptiations from congress, many of these going to roads and other forms of infrastructure

andi i didn't realize that nc had a CIA

and i didn't realize the student loans i took to go to college were banked by the state

and i didn't realize when nixon signed the bill creating osha, he was doing so for the state gov't of NC

3/18/2006 1:27:30 PM

it's one thing to say the federal government could be done away with, it's quite another to say that it does absolutely nothing right now

3/18/2006 1:28:55 PM

Quote :

"I understand that you're trying to make a point, LoneSnark, but I've never understood people who try to use theonion.com articles as the basis for their arguments."

Don't be silly. I post theonion here for merely comedic effect. That some here actually took a joke as an honest moral attack upon the existance of the Federal Government is what seems entirely not-funny.

And Woodfoot, you might check your list. If you had listed the CIA or your student loans specifically that would have been one thing, but you did not. All you listed were generalizations, all of which are provided in one way or another by state entities to varying degrees. I was not intending my statement to mean the Federal Government is non-existant, merely to point out the reality that the Federal Government merely receives half of our tax dollars, most of which is spent on old people and the military.

And this is funny: A war-games scenario awhile back determined that the state militias of Texas, New Mexico, and California alone could not only repel the military forces of Mexico, but could actually invade and occupy the Capital, all without Federal Assistance. I don't have the link and I'm fairly sure it would come with heavy casualties, but there you go.

3/18/2006 4:29:30 PM

It's not really saying much since the american government has had mexico's balls in a vice for several years now.

3/18/2006 5:30:42 PM

Any more-so than the Chinese have America in a vice?

3/18/2006 9:01:36 PM

it would be markedly easier for the texas state militia to invade mejico than it would be for the red chinese army to invade amurrca

3/18/2006 9:13:26 PM

Sorry, my question was directed at "the american government has had mexico's balls in a vice for several years now"

I wanted him to elaborate on what this statement actually meant. Mexico is not currently undergoing occupation, so I assume he is referring to Mexico's financial debt.

3/19/2006 12:51:31 AM

China doesn't give us any military aid. It was the US military that stopped the Zapatistas. And most of that was for economic secuirty so banks could keep leaching them. But I was talking about militarily in which we give them the support. Economically speaking it's the WTO that has the mexican government on a leash.

3/19/2006 1:53:27 AM

Quote :

"it would be markedly easier for the texas state militia to invade mejico than it would be for the red chinese army to invade amurrca"

Which is why it's unlikely ever to happen. Basically, we're forced to spend nearly a half-trillion a year on a massively over-sized military with only an infinitesimally small possibility that they will ever prove worth the money.

The chinese, and every other country remotely capable of doing so, must know that invading the US is not a course of action capable of benefiting them in any way, military or no military. So why do statists make such a show of worrying about it?

3/19/2006 3:15:54 PM

Libertarianism works

signed

New Orleans and Katrina victims

3/19/2006 3:28:02 PM

OK, so a bunch of hapless welfare dependants, whose government fails to prevent a crisis and fails to come to their aid once it materializes, invalidates libertarianism.

I love your logic.

You're absolutely right. The lesson of Katrina is that we need to put more trust in the government's desire and ability to take care of us.</sarcasm>

[Edited on March 19, 2006 at 3:44 PM. Reason : ']

3/19/2006 3:34:39 PM

Quote :

"OK, so a bunch of hapless welfare dependants, whose government fails to prevent a crisis and fails to come to their aid once it materializes, invalidates libertarianism."

and if we had libertarianism no one would have been helped.

3/19/2006 4:08:37 PM

I don't think that is the case. Numerous corporations and wealthy individuals tried to help, but were stopped at the border by our inept government leaders.

Secondly, he believes that if it wasn't for government efforts the poor would not have been concentrated in such a precarious location. These people were there because the government housing was there, without which the individuals in question would have instead gone to live wherever the nearest sweat shop was located, most likely in the rural inland area where land is cheaper (most likely in appalling conditions inside an abandoned wal-mart run and operated by their sweat-shop employer).

Thirdly, if the government didn't reward idleness, these poor people would have worked their way out of poverty by now, meaning they wouldn't exist in the first place to need saving (possibly replaced by Mexican immigrants, which are used to walking through water to safety).

#2 and #3 would be merely coincidence. but #1 is undeniable. I remember watching the news and seeing a fleet of private boats waiting to go in and rescue people, but being told instead to go home because FEMA couldn't guarantee their safety (evidently they weren't allowed to bring guns with them). Wal-Mart had a convoy of 18 wheelers loaded down with bottled water, clothes, and food sitting in Arkansas at a roadblock, denied entry into the state because, again, FEMA in cooperating with the Governor wanted to get people out of the area, letting 30 or so Wal-Mart employees in was counter productive to their reconing.

Unlike Megaloman, I don't see anything wrong with the government helping in a disaster. Saving lives is the first purpose of government in my reconing, hence why states have national guard units. But to pretend that without government assistance there is no assistance is dangerous. Because once in awhile idiots win elections and all you have that works is the private system. If Wal-Mart launches a rescue attempt and fails, maybe Greyhound bus-lines will get through. But no one can help if road-blocks have been set up.

[Edited on March 19, 2006 at 6:13 PM. Reason : .,.]

3/19/2006 5:57:57 PM

Quote :

"Unlike Megaloman, I don't see anything wrong with the government helping in a disaster."

And yet, you just finished pointing out that the government, far from helping, actually hindered efforts to help the victims of Katrina. It's not that I don't want the government to help people, it's just that I realize the goverment's unique mix of evil and incompetance inevitably leads to disaster. We'd be better off without their help in the vast majority of cases.

3/20/2006 12:29:15 PM

But that is not an argument for Government to stop trying to help, merely stop preventing private elements from trying to help.

3/20/2006 1:39:03 PM