is it sad that I'd love to move to USA, start a reality tv-show

where I basically just go around hitting people with a huge inflatable mallet and calling them spoiled brats, and to stop abusing the word 'freedom'   ?

I wonder how long it'd take before I was killed...

*chuckles*  It depends on where you went.   If you went to safe places where no one is used to drama or danger, they'd be too confused to do anything.  In any crime ridden area, people would be quick to strike back.

"Freedom of Speech", technically only means that you can say what you want about the government without fear of reprisal, like in some countries where criticizing the government gets you thrown in jail.
We try to apply that to any kind of speech, but there are limits.   When you're talking about non-government people, you have to be careful, because insults can be considered slander or even obscene, depending on their extremity.
Combine that with many people taking religion WAY too seriously in America, and you have a group that gets practically rabid at the slightest insult.
Not as bad as in Islamic theocracies, but they lash out as much as they can.

There are worse countries to live in if you want freedom of speech.  Sometimes I think that folks in the West have it too good that they don't realize how good that they have it.

Very true.  We're a bit spoiled here, assuming that we're safe no matter what we say or do.   We blurt out whatever we want, and presume that everyone will just put up with it.
It doesn't work so well in other places, that's true.

hah, I've had a few american tourists try the freedom of speech thing on me...

I'm a european, I can kick their asses as they are in my country insulting ME...

muahahahhaha, it has felt good, I might have been a little too mean to them poor tourists, but if they'd said some things, to a drunk finn, they might not have come home from our country

insulting my knowledge and how I live in a third-world country cause it isn't USA, is just no okay in my books, oh well, they were properly educated in the matter :)

Almost nicely even

On behalf of Americans everywhere, I apologize for our ignorant tourists.   I'd hoped that the truly stupid ones wouldn't go to Finland, but American idiots come in all varieties.
Yes, if all the world's countries were the children of a large neighborhood of houses, America would be the spoiled children of a wealthy family who have been raised thinking they're better than everyone else, "just because we're American".
Many of us don't feel that way, and have a much better opinion of the rest of the world (or at least a more realistic opinion of America), but many buy into the propaganda that "America is Number One!!!!".

Please keep educating our tourists.   I thank you for your hard work trying to put understanding into our hard heads.  :)

don't apologize, it wasn't you I educated, there will always in all countries be those that are so proud of their home-country that they are blind for anything negative

and reality to boot

that doesn't mean you have to apologize on the behalf of those that are ignorant of how life works, we have tons of stupid finns that go abroad and just shout in finnish loudly to get what they want

it's like they think the world speaks finnish and they just happen to run into people with bad hearing...

*laughs*   I'm glad that the concept of "speaking your language loudly makes people magically understand it" is more universal than I thought.

Yes, "nationalism", as I think Grizzly said once, is a very dangerous thing.    There are people who assume they're better than others, just because they happened to be conceived and born on a certain spot on the Earth.

we don't have nationalism in the same way as americans thought

I mean, we own one large flag to put up on certain days in the year

I saw some places in the USA have a tiny flag on every pole of the fence of their house, and then in the window and on their clothes

don't get me wrong, you have a pretty flag, but we don't have flags in the same way, tiny flags to give tourists is hard to find even

they are for sale during ice-hockey times, when we go all over the world to cheer on our country... We have some nutty ice-hockey hooked people

*chuckles*    Yes, we get a little crazy about nationalism here.   Here in Texas it's even worse than many other states.    Nationalism is hyped more than nearly anything else.
It's almost a religion in America.

We had soldiers trained by nazis during the ww2, then we got smart and fought against them

still a thing to be ashamed of thought, the bloody nazis

So being too nationalistic is seen as bad, those that do it is skin-heads and bad people

so we careful

*smiles*    There's an expression that does:  "People in Glass Houses shouldn't throw stones."   Meaning that people who are vulnerable to criticism shouldn't be too free with criticism for other.

American, despite many of us feeling that we're "the good guys of the world", has a lot of dark spots in our history.   Not the least  being coming late to WWI and WWII.
We also have lots of nazis and White Supremacists here in America.  There has been estimates that we have more people who identify as nazis than Germany does.   Granted, we're a much larger country, but still...

Having horrible things in our past isn't something to obsess on.  We just have to work to get past it and make the future better.

And America isn't practically next door to Germany, so I won't judge Finland for what happened during Hitler's war.    :)

The thing with Nazis in Germany, they don't last long, people feel so ashamed of their past, that they kick the living shit out of skinheads that dare deny the holocaust... (Or so I've heard)

Yes, the skinheads and Nazis over here say it didn't happen, that the ruins were all built by Americans to keep German afraid

And well, it happened, they even uncovered another camp that had been hidden, so nothing build, just dug up, somewhere in europe

We have a holocaust-trip that goes from most schools in Finland every year, to go see all the camps, to meet survivors

School pays part of the trip, kids can't get grants or parents to pay the rest, it is a rather important event

I had this very vivid and scary nightmare a few months back, where I dreamed I was a homosexual man, going to one of these camps, ending up to be gassed... I woke up from being unable to breath... I dream vividly, so it took me a while to figure out that I was still female, still in my own bed, still able to breath

Wow!  I can see a visit to one of the death camps bringing on all kinds of trauma, including bad dreams.   I can't believe that you guys go there from school.  We went to museum and a bakery distribution  center, I think.
I can't imagine going somewhere so deeply emotional

We have our own Holocaust deniers here as well, but they're considered crazy fringe people.    My old girlfriend was Jewish and had a grandfather in one of the work camps (he got out when the Allies liberated the camp).

That does not sound like a nice dream at all.  I can't say that I've ever dreamt of one of the concentration camps but then I have never been to one.  I'd like to, not out of some morbid curiosity but...hmm...plain curiosity?  Does that make me sound weird?

I've been to the Berlin wall, after it fell, and walked the path that my grandparents took to escape from East Germany to West Germany, and it was very interesting to see.  There's a sort of scale that pictures just can't quite give and it's a piece of history that needs to be heard and passed on.

I haven't traveled as much as I'd have liked.  I've never been to Europe, but perhaps someday.   I'll be the Wall was something to see.
History is always so much more powerful in person, after all.

Curiosity is a good thing, it helps us put things into perspective and to see the actual truth

you see, all facts in history-books is written by the winners of the war, so they might have skipped a few details they found embarrassing

There is a war in Finland that is called "white red war" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_Civil_War

Basically it's people blaming their neighbors for being communist, and it was a secret and an embarrassing thing, I didn't read about it in history books, nothing was said, the dates and civil war was all the facts I was taught

And then, about 6 or so years ago, a history teacher from my town decided to write a book about that period, and suddenly, we have facts and we can discuss how people attacked their neighbors for "being red"

My grandma used to walk far around some families, "as they were red" and we knew nothing of this, we thought she was a lil loony, now I know, how traumatizing it really was

So I'd want to visit all places that has been important in history in one way or other, to talk to locals about what really happened, not the public relations version, to smooth over the real cruelty, make it... diplomatic...

war is terrible, and it's so often cleaned up and hidden

Wow!  I'll admit that I never knew that Finland was that young as a sovereign nation.   I always assumed it was centuries old.
That's a very fascinating history, to be honest.

America has plenty of embarrassing moments in its history as well.   Our "red" period was also very horrifying.
During the 1950s, fear of the Communists was particularly intense, and Senator Joseph McCarthy started the "House UnAmerican Activities Committee".  He saw Communists everywhere, and ruined hundreds, if not thousands, of lives, including movie stars and other celebrities, as well as ordinary people, who were "black listed" and forced out of regular society.

yeah, well Finland has existed since 1917 as Finland, but it existed for years as other countries backwaters areas

basically allowed to speak Finnish but to be silent about it

and now, we have gone overboard with the Finnish, now we have very few non-Finnish speaking people

and they are hated by Finns, even kicked the shit out of when in the wrong place and speaking the wrong language...

it's sad, really

2 languages I see as an important part of our culture, the earlier one studies a second language, the better the brain gets a third or even a 4th language

I feel it's enriching, but sadly, I'm one of those that speaks the "wrong" language, and has been threatened because of that

Yes, Nationalism can be very scary.  America has bouts of that, every generation or so, as people cry and complain about "the foreigners".  They forget, of course, that nearly everyone here is descended from someone who came as a "foreigner" within the last few hundred years.

But "people who aren't like us" are an easy and convenient target, a bit like a form of racism, for people to complain about and look down upon.

You're right, though, people should be encouraged to speak many languages if possible.   I've never had the head for languages. I wish I did.

Though many conservative people here are complaining about Spanish being spoken so often.

Reminds me of a joke:

A man was in line at a store, in front of a brown skinned woman who was speaking some foreign language into her phone to someone.   The man waited  until she was done, then turned and angrily said: "This is America. We speak American here.  If you want to speak Spanish, go back to Mexico!"
The woman smiled and responded: "Actually, I was speaking Navajo, one of the language of the REAL 'Americans'.  But if you want to speak English, you should bo back to England."

I tried to learn spanish, but they have this thing where future tense and past tense is a totally new word, and it confused the hell out of me

maybe I will learn it later, and you have no idea how excited I was over a sign in a bus that said a warning in both spanish and english as I visited USA, it's like other countries than us have signs with two languages on them

it's odd, but first time I saw it

same thing happened when I went to switzerland, they had signs with more than one language on it!!!

yeah, I'm a lil cooky for languages

I'm often amazed at how much spanish is spoken in the US.  I thought that Canada was bilingual but nothing like I've experienced since I moved to the US.  I'm trying to learn Spanish.  Hopefully I'll be able to stick with it longer than my French or German.

Never a bad thing to know another language.

The Francophones in Quebec are almost militant over the french language.  They have laws that prevent signs being displayed in other languages.  I don't think that they go around beating any English speakers up, they just keep trying to separate from the rest of the country every decade or so...all in order to protect their language.

Yeah, I heard they did a try this year to be a separate country

Which is just annoying, why not say french is the primary language in the place where french is important, trying to kick out english won't work

don't mess with a language, people wants to eavesdrop, and will be really annoyed if they feel stupid when they can't understand what people around them say

the sad fact that they'd be able to eavesdrop if they learned the language is toooo much work.. sigh

Yes, there are lot of places that want independence from within a country.  As an American, I'm all about independence, but many of the cases, like Quebec, don't make any real sense, and it all about ego.
Many Americans are freaking about how much Spanish is spoken here.   But we've always had problems with isolationists.

I just like to heard a second language

and to be able to understand what people say... Guilty of liking to eavesdrop I am

very yoda, that was