Speaking of Israel...

[Greyblades]

American exceptionalism has been running on full blast for 70 years with a nationalistic tank containing only your performance in two world wars (well, 1 and 1/4) a rebellion and a civil war. We had 4 world wars (counting napoleon and 7 year) an empire and several times where we went against the premier powers of the ages and fought them to a standstill. The falklands is not even a blip on the radar compared to the reserves we built up in the last 6 centuries, our nationalistic tank wont be empty any time soon.

We can only hope that such precident will inspire us to live up to the old accomplishments but with a modern standard of morality.

More likely we will continue doing what the rest of the western world is: growing ever more complacent, rotting on our faded laurels and comforting ourselves with tales of past generations as we are soon overtaken by asia and later africa.

[rory_20_uk]

I disagree.

America managed to massively fill its tank since it manages to see victory in everything and not only did it win WW1 and 2, but the Korean, the Cold and Iraq 1 and 2. Coupled with a child like belief in their own self righteousness it is a potent force.

The British went through this phase and came out of it having effectively lost WW1 and WW2 (Empire, prestige and world position) and declined ever since - with a large part of this by choice.

We also appear to have a fetish of applying the morals of today to the entire Empire and feeling oh so guilty about it all (yeah, India was a thriving democracy that we overturned and we didn't buy the black slaves off other black people and everywhere we left became so much fairer; the vote for men in the UK only arrived c. 1900 and life expectancy in Liverpool in 1880 was 18 years). Yes, Maggie managed to beat off a also ran country but frankly that shows how far we've fallen - getting all pleased we beat Argentina??!?

We're not complacent - we're pathetic.

We're mewing about multiculturalism and how we mustn't stand for anything unless that upsets someone somewhere - often here as we are more than happy for people to relocate and not want to naturalise.

Defence is nasty and best we don't spend money on that. We also managed to get health and safety legislation in to the armed forces. We are affectionately known as the "Borrowers" by the Americans since equipment levels are so pitiful that the troops are all but pitied. We act like someone with no self esteem that if we keep doing everything we're asked to they'll keep on liking us.

Doing business with anyone whose moral code is not as squeaky clean as we, for reasons lost on me, delude ourselves that we have as trade is also nasty - apart from the Financial Sector which we treat like a free trade zone and try not to monitor in the slightest.

We spend money on moving the deck chairs around our failing social welfare system which increases in both cost and %GDP for the last 50 years or so. Politicians of all stripes are so scared of loosing votes that all big decisions are overlooked (e.g. a property tax that increases uncapped as house prices increase or even that perhaps paying for everyone to become a graduate is not as important as paying for people to be able to do something useful) since it seems better to be the leader of a sinking ship than try to fix it.