[Darth Marley]

I have heard many Irish engage in foolish diatribes about "you Americans, we live in a war zone all the time."
Frankly, those claims do not have any credence with me. We have violence here, sometimes political, sometimes psychotic.
The difference is, rather than killing because of Protestant/Catholic differences, or wheter the Brits protect the Protestants in N.I., or blowing things up because one is somehow pissed off that they have to see English language signs (hey, are we coming to an "understanding" of the terroist motives yet?), we kill with the organized military both in retaliation, and to pre-empt threats.
Our motive is self-preservation.

The notion that violence doesn't solve anything does not hold true. Violence has decisively settled more disputes throughout history than any other method.

And regarding the resentment of Americans that this will cause, perhaps this is why there are so many German and Japanese terroist striking out in revenge of their war dead from WW2. Are the Koreans and Vietnamese still striking out at us for multi-generational vengance?

As for the broadside that America isn't socialist enough, face it, socialist tendancies are a very recent phenomena in political history.
Cave men did not freeze because the government didn't help them pay their heating bill.
It amazes me that those who claim to love nature so much, and work to leave so much of it untouched try so hard to insert artificial, man-made social constructs in to a society.
Here in the states, if you go back a few years and chart the cost of an overnight hospital stay, it goes up rather sharply once the government started paying for health care back in the 50s. The involvment of government paying for health care is in fact the core cause of the inflation of its price. The government could radically reduce the asking price of health services overnight by immediately eliminating any federal dollars going to pay for anyone's health care.

The first practicioner of Reaganomics here was that bastion of conservative thought J.F. Kennedy. Do we hear any horror stories of the tragic consequences of his tax cut program?