alansmithee

They don't have to like us. I'd prefer if they don't, makes it easier to deal with them. But they will keep taking our money, which makes them little more than sycophants, groupies, or whores take your pick.

There are two major industrialized nations that have English as a primary language (US and UK). Canada is greatly English-speaking, but from what I know from my visits there is that French is the official language in at least one province. In Europe, on the mainland there is no country who primarily speaks English. I don't see what benefit English has over other languages inherently, except for the fact that you can easier deal with US and UK. IIRC, French used to be considered the "universal language". It's definately the primary language in more countries. Also, english is considered one of the more difficult languages to learn. Yet it's the one that most countries choose to focus on.
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I'm sure this all comes off quite a bit arrogant. Well, it is. But many of the posts in this thread seem to boil down to "we like the people (read-their money) but we don't like their administration (read-their having self-interest)". It seems like world opinion wants the US to be a world welfare agency/ATM machine without having it's own interests. And that's ridiculous. All the UN/WTO talk is silly from a US perspective-those bodies are nothing more than a way for the countries who have less power to try to exert authority over countries who have more power. Why should the US listen to the UN? Seriously, what benefit comes from the UN toward the US that couldn't be gotten outside of it? But for France for instance, there's great benefit to having US (or China or Russia for that matter) held under the yoke of UN authority, because otherwise they lack the power to be able to reasonably influence the US.

I mean really, the world hates the US because the US doesn't pay attention to them? Maybe the rest of the world should start looking more internally instead of worring so much about the US.