Resolved: The United States ought to be considered a 'good' country.

Thanks to my opponent for challenging me and giving me a chance to express my views on the United States. I apologize if things jump around a bit, but within my opponent's large block of text, it was difficult for me to pick out individual arguments. 1. The United States is a democracy, and we are allowed, without coercion, to choose what we think is best. a. The Weimar Republic was a democracy before Hitler came to power; The Weimar Republic was Germany, between WWI and WWII; understand that, because of the people's desperation to better their own situation, they were willing to choose anyone who promised change; and, as we see, Hitler was not such a good choice; in the same way, the issues of war and economic crisis prompted many to vote for Barack Obama; and, while Obama certainly hasn't started a 2nd Holocaust, my point is that we pick many people not from ideology, but out of desperation to better our own interests; thus, merely because something appears to be democratic does not make it good. b. When voting for a president, you don't actually vote for him; you're voting for the electors who will go to the Electoral College, and will cast their vote for the candidate of their choosing; thus, you're actually handing your vote to a person you've never met, to go a place you don't know about, to cast a vote that you will never hear about. That hardly sounds democratic to me. 2. Other countries are 'democratic', like the U. S. a. That's because democracy essentially originated in Europe, as did the United States; thus, you can expect the governmental structures to be extremely similar. b. This is merely an ad populum, saying that 'because other countries are like us, we must be good! ' 3. Other countries don't have as many freedoms. a. The problem with freedom is that, you can't maximize freedom, because then people will merely push for more and more freedom with the mindset that they don't have any corresponding responsibilities; the purpose for which government was created was to limit absolute freedom; if we push our society back to this absolute freedom, we're only pushing ourselves to a minarchic, if not anarchic, society; and, assuming that the United States is, as it claims, "a nation of laws", this is the last thing we want, yet we still allow it. 4. We've never had a bad President. a. Quincy Adams, Taft, and Buchanan are all examples of pretty bad presidents; but of course, that could be subjective, since I only believe so because Quincy Adams was an intellectual elitist, and wasn't in touch with people, Taft came in on Jackson's coattails and was quite ineffective, and Buchanan did absolutely nothing to try and heal the schism with the South; if you want a definitive list of 'bad' presidents, here is US News' Top 10: [. http://www.usnews.com...] 5. The 'Economic Situation' a. The United States' national debt is higher than it has ever been; so obviously, it's a bit questionable that our government would decide to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to fix our economy; it didn't work with the New Deal, and it's not working now. b. Thanks to our government's policy of borrowing money, China essentially owns our economy; the only reason we are still afloat is because China continues to lend to us; if they were ever to call back those loans, our country would fall flat on its face due to our government's weak economic planning. [. http://english.pravda.ru...] 6. The War on Terror a. We aren't pulling our troops out; we're merely redeploying them. [. http://www.huffingtonpost.com...] [. http://www.rferl.org...] b. It's entirely paranoid to say 'if we pull out, they will attack us'. That wasn't true in the Korean War, nor the Vietnam war, and that's certainly not true now. I must ask my opponent, what viable means do they have to get over here? They had to hijack OUR planes to commit the 9/11 terrorist attacks; they don't have fighter jets, or helicopters, or battleships. 7. America has no extremists. a. I beg to differ. [. http://en.wikipedia.org...] b. Two examples: One would obviously be the KKK, who went around terrorizing, brutalizing, often lynching blacks out of a misguided sense of justice - AKA, White Supremacy; second would be right-wing extremists who often go around 'shooting up' abortion clinics, as was the case with Dr. George Tiller in Wichita, Kansas. [. http://www.huffingtonpost.com...] Clearly, my opponent is mistaken in claiming that we have no 'shoot-em-up extremists', to paraphrase. 8. Crime is going down, and you can move to a safer area. a. We had a similar policy with the Indians; we told them first that we would not cross the Appalachian Mountains; then we told them the Mississippi River; finally, we told them that if they went to Indian Territory (my present-day state of Oklahoma), that they would have that land as theirs forever, and that nothing bad could happen; by analogy here, if we see people migrating to these 'safer' states, obviously there will be overpopulation, but a spike in population will obviously spike the crime rate, as there are not only more possible victims, but more potential criminals. 9. Every country wants to emulate the United States. a. Sure. Every country definitely wants to be like us; that's why we didn't lose nearly all of our allies in the War on Terror, and our international image DEFINITELY wasn't horribly tarnished after Bush. 10. Communist Iraq. a. What? There's an Iraqi Communist Party [. http://en.wikipedia.org...], but it never really ruled the country; the report there details how it was popular in uprisings and demonstrations, but suffered under the Hussein Regime, opposed the sanctions following the 1991 Kuwait conflict, and, these days, gets little support in Iraq's elections. I'm not sure where your facts are coming from. To be clear, Communism is not a type of government; it is an economic system. 11. The 'Land of Opportunity' a. This is merely a slogan that people use, like McCain's "Country First! " or Obama's entire "Change" and "Yes We Can" campaign; this doesn't lend any credibility to your argument, especially when opportunities are scarce, as you yourself admit that "economic times are. .. worse than they used to be. " 12. People move here. a. People move away from America, also; the road goes both ways; I had a friend last year for example that went back to his home country of Iran. 13. Americans learn other languages. a. Americans also go to other countries and expect the natives to speak English as a convenience; seems quite arrogant for a country so 'passionately devoted' to learning foreign languages. 14. Illegal immigrants a. Just because we're a better country than Mexico (as that's where most illegals come from) does not make us a better country; it's like saying that murdering one person is better than two; both situations are still bad, but one is merely more tolerable; it's the same way with the United States; in fact, much of the drug violence, gang wars, and sex trafficking that occurs in Mexico (to use one nation as an example) is spreading across the border along with illegal immigrants; The United States is indeed no good, but is still more tolerable than unstable Mexico. I've got less than 400 characters at this point; thus, let me conclude: My opponent never proves that America is 'good'; he uses a lot of slogans like "Land of Opportunity" and "Home of the Free"; he makes assertions like "People LOVE America" and "This is a great country"; he asks a lot of questions, even, but no arguments are made; and his evidence, of course, is non-existent.