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• Wednesday, August 29, 2007 06:58 PM

  -- Casual Interest

  This struck me as funny. Being Australian we really *are* a huge country isolated by vast distances - hell, we have to cross water just to get to one of our states. Last I checked wasn't America bordered by couple of other countries at least??? Sorry to nitpick, but I think your reasoning is slightly faulty.

  This might help clarify things for you:

  Australians actually travel more internationally than Americans. Australians have on average several weeks of vacation, and Pacific nations ranging from Japan to the USA are often the destinations. The USA has a very diverse climate ranging from rainforests to deserts to arctic regions. We have landmarks like the Grand Canyon, and Niagra Falls (on the border) which contributes to some American's notion they can see it all in America.

  Unlike Australia, the USA is a superpower, which means many Americans tend to be uninterested in foreign affairs believing the USA to truly be an island unto itself geo-politically, with some suits sorting out the details in Washington or wherever.

  China historically was very similar, calling itself the "Middle Kingdom" and basically considering itself the center of the world.

  Traditionally America was also very isolationist, and in many ways many still is. Culturally America made more of a break with Europe than Australia. For example, until Pearl Harbor was attacked, the USA was reluctant to enter WWII. Though you'd not know it superficially because leaders rely on middle-America's lack of interest in FP, to sell them on fabricated threats. And of course even isolationists respond to perceived threats.

  While Australia is a vast landscape, almost all the population is coastal on a small fragment of the overall land. Much of Americans are also coastal, and tend to be more international mined, but there is certainly a far larger percentage of Americans living inland in relatively low population density areas.

  —healthyskeptic Read healthyskeptic's other letters
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