I'd refer you to my series "Myths of our economy" and the post on "They Hate Us For Our Freedom", but instead I'll tell a little story.

After the Berlin Wall fell, a group of Sovjet news-reporters finally had a chance to visit the US to see the workings of a truly free press, without KGB interference. John Pilger, a famous Australian reporter and documentary maker, took a group of them to New York and LA, and I'll never forget what the Sovjets told Pilger... They were baffled, astonished. They asked Pilger: "How on Earth do you manage this? How can it be that almost all headlines in all news-outings are exactly the same? How can it be that whatever newspaper we read or whatever television show we watch, the same news gets repeated over and over again? We don't understand; back in Russia we needed the constant scare of being arrested by KGB agents to keep us in line..."

What the KGB did in Russia seems to come natural in America. That, my friend, is something to think about. Not that it's better here, in Europe or anywhere else in the world. All governments adhere to their country's role on the world economic stage. And America is the world's provider of weapons.