God, I cannot believe I am even having this conversation.

So much for enlightened Europeans.  You are just as ignorant as the Americans who digust you.

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. -Voltaire

yep!

I think the response you get can be much affected by how you phrase your discussion attempts. No one likes to be told that they are doing it wrong, and we here in another country knows how to do it right. The same seems true here when someone from the US writes on, for example, their approach to integration, and how it is superiour to ours. It makes people defensive even if they would readily agree that their own system lacks much. I think it helps a lot, especially in the beginning before people "know your name", to start in a softer way. For example:

"I have noticed that people on this forum feel that the current healthcare system of the US does not work very well. Let me describe the system we have in my country. Our system is also not perfect, it has advatages and it has problems, but maybe knowing about its workings can be useful for those of you that want to think about how your system should be changed." I haven't tried this on blogs, but in some e-mail conversations and some live conversations. It seems to work pretty well if your goal is to have a discussion.

I know nothing about what you wrote so I am not judging it. But I know that I have read a couple of diaries by Europeans that were quite, um confrontational is not the quite right word, but something like that. Diaries that when I read them I feel on the one hand "yes, I agree with you, the author." But also "the way you write, the way you express yourself, I know already what the reaction will be in the comments. You are not sparking fruitful discussion here, people will get defensive."

I find it a bit annoying in general how touchy people can be. How quick they are to assume the worst intentions of others. How unwilling they are to read that which pisses off a second time, with a more charitable approach, and then try to shape a non-confrontational response for fruitful debate. But maybe their intentions and goals are different than mine? But I am also willing to assume that this will be the case and I attempt, as much as I can bear, to take into account this tendency to defensivness and preempt it as much as I can. It only works when I am in a good mood...

I think there may have been some changes since the dark ages, and this is a place for the seeding of changes.  There are some dunderheads at dkos, but it is a good forum for getting a message out there, and I think that it is an important message.  It is the same battle here as there, and we have been losing here.  I am not sure, and don't want to succumb to American exceptionalism, but I think it will be difficult for Europeans to prosper in the long run if the forces that are ascendent in this political system are uncontested.  Mybe I'm wrong, and maybe the political factors inherent in Europe now will protect you from the slow and steady grasp of neo-liberal economics which values economic freedom over all other facets of freedom.  If we lose, I hope that you are able to prevail and flip Churchill on his head and have the old world come to the rescue of the new.

I would humbly say that I think your last paragraph has the usual amount of truth as any other stereotype.  Some, but not the whole story, and that is what I, and poemless are asking for, tell the whole story, or your portion of it.  We are so big and insular that we have more myopia than is healthy.  I had a Spanish girl as an Exchange student in the early 90's and even here in Sonoma County California it was culture shock for the kids who would ask her stupid stuff like, "Do they have cars in Spain?"

"I said, 'Wait a minute, Chester, You know I'm a peaceful man...'" Robbie Robertson