goodnews wrote: IN Europe people work 30-35 hours a week and they are very well civilized and live a wonderful life.

Sounds like lazy pieces of crap to me.  I don't see how they are more civilized though.

tmli wrote: They are more civilized about health care,semiautomatic weapons,frivolous lawsuits, nutrition/exercise, and knowledge of science (no stupid debates over there about teaching evolution in school). Also much fewer far right Christian lunatics. They are less civilized though when it comes to accepting immigrants and people who look different.

Sounds to me like they just more agree with your opinion ("more to the left"). That does not make them more civilized. Health care, for example, is an area where such a claim is ambiguous. Yes, more people can get access to health care without losing an arm and a leg paying for it. However, US is much better at cancer survival rates, for example. In general, most of the claims of being more civilized or advanced are fairly ambiguous. In general, Europe is better at the things that generally matter to Europeans, while America is generally better at the things that that generally matter to Americans. I don't think "having fewer far-right lunatics" makes them more civilized.

I also agree with the immigrant thing. They love to lecture the US about its immigration problems, but much of Europe doesn't have immigration problems for a very simple reason -- many European countries do not accept non-European immigrants.