NationStates Jolt Archive

Do you think that there is a distinction between the products a country exports, the policies of that countries government, the people who live in that country, and the cultural values of that country.

I've seen debates on other threads where a dislike of US foreign policy is immiediately assumed to mean a hatred of America, Americans etc. etc.
Conversely, some countries are called 'allies' because they have fast food outlets in them. Or people are called hypocrites because the have a computer - an 'American' innovation - but would like to see the US improve it's environmental record. The examples are legion.

In my opinion all of these types arguments are intellectually lazy showing either an inability to think these issues through or a deliberate desire to cloud the issue in order to stop discussion.

What do you think?

Do you think that there is a distinction between the products a country exports, the policies of that countries government, the people who live in that country, and the cultural values of that country.

I've seen debates on other threads where a dislike of US foreign policy is immiediately assumed to mean a hatred of America, Americans etc. etc.
Conversely, some countries are called 'allies' because they have fast food outlets in them. Or people are called hypocrites because the have a computer - an 'American' innovation - but would like to see the US improve it's environmental record. The examples are legion.

In my opinion all of these types arguments are intellectually lazy showing either an inability to think these issues through or a deliberate desire to cloud the issue in order to stop discussion.

What do you think?

I've never heard the exports of a country being what influanced someone's opinion towards it (except as a supplement to other reasons)

Forign policy makes up the country, IE America, or Canada, in the eyes of the other countries. France hates Canada would mean that the French government hates the Canadian one.

The people who live in it are different, IE Americans, Canadians. The French hate Canadians would be the people of France hating the people of Canada

The cultural values is somewhere in between, and that's where theline gets blurry. Often laws passed by the government reflect the culture of the people, and so to hate those laws is to hate the government that passed them and the people that demanded them (oversimplified)