theleveller,

As a right-wing, libertarian-leaning, Christian, gun-rights-supporting, peace-loving environmentalist, fundamentally supporting the death penalty, and as an American, I'm sure you would find plenty in The American Way of Life with which you could identify.

We have a lively left-wing flapping about the body politic, including quite a few Mudcat members. They speak with perfect freedom here, just as they do in the U.K.

We have plenty of radicals of all stripes, rightist, leftist, libertarian, environmentalist, you name it. You would fit right in and be, I suppose, at least as welcome to your views here as you are welcome to them at home.

You could certainly identify with our home-grown atheists. We probably have as many here as you do there though, of course, they are a smaller proportion of our population.

As a gun-hater, you'll have millions of allies here too though, again, they are a smaller proportion of our population.

As for peace-loving, well, I'm 48, have lived here all my life, and have never yet met an American who wasn't peace-loving. (The sound you hear across the Atlantic is the heads of leftist Americans exploding with rage at this statement, but please read on.) Americans disagree among ourselves about how best to achieve peace in the long run, and about what price we are willing to pay to achieve it. Obviously, since we disagree among ourselves about the means to peace, some of us, maybe most of us, are wrong about the best means. But 99.999999% of us agree on the goal: long-term peace, with liberty. Some, like our thriving Amish and Mennonite communities, are completely pacifist. Most of use probably agree with our late President Franklin Roosevelt (and your current Prime Minister and our current President) that defending, and even imposing, democracy is a worthwhile goal, even though it costs American (and British) lives. Our left-wing sometimes speaks as though our right-wing, like the Spartans of old, actually liked war. That's just rhetoric, not reality. There was a time when my countrymen supported war to seize land from others, but no living American can remember those days. Our last acquisitions, the Northern Mariana Islands, are free to go their own way if they choose, as did Palau, the Marshall Islands, and Micronesia. We did not try to hold Japan or South Korea or Kuwait, and are not trying to hold Iraq or Afghanistan. If you love peace, you'll love it here, just as you love your own country.

As a fellow environmentalist, I know you would love it here. I've never made it up to Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, our largest, but I'm sure we would both love it. At over 53,000 square kilometers, it's about the size of the Irish Republic, Northern Ireland, and Wales combined and is almost entirely wilderness. I don't have to travel far, though, to enjoy nature. On my way to work last week, I saw cottontail rabbits, ground squirrels, groundhogs, deer, gray squirrels, fox squirrels, red-tailed hawks, turkey buzzards, a wild turkey, and a barred owl. Lake Eire, which we share with Canada, is no longer dead and our Cuyahoga River, which flows into it, hasn't caught fire in decades. Last year, I saw a beaver swimming there. As an environmentalist, you would not find it perfect here, but you would find a lot to love.

As for opposing the death penalty, you would also find plenty of support. My gun-loving home state of West Virginia, in spite of the redneck fundamentalist stereotypes, does not have the death penalty. If I am not mistaken, Michigan was one of the first jurisdictions in the world to abolish the death penalty (1846). You might also like Alaska, Hawaii, Maine, New Mexico, North Dakota, or another of the 14 states without the death penalty.

From what I've read, I would probably love the English way of life almost as much as I love the American way of life. We are both very blessed by our respective countries.

Kent