Little Hawk...my remarks about "free" health care were intended as a demonstration of the fact that the government, that huge shadowy entity, provides nothing for free. In America, most of us pay large premiums for health insurance that will cover 80% of our bill if we are ill. A major trauma that lands you in the hospital for 2 months may end up totalling 50 or 60 thousand dollars or more, and you may still be bankrupted by paying your share. Since insurance companies dictate treatment, almost all surgery in the US is out-patient surgery, in and out the same day. And so I admit that our health-care system here is pretty lousy. My wife is English, and they have so-called "free" health care there. But the downside is two-fold- tremendous tax burdens, including the outrageous VAT on everything you buy. Additionally, if you need surgery there, you get in line and wait, sometimes months. In both systems, one funded by insurance, the other "free", it seems to me the results are fairly unsatisfactory, and you end up paying one way or the other.

You say that Cuba's Constitution was a "brilliant" document. Did it provide for the basic freedom of speech? How could it be a brilliant document if it did not? And if it did why is that freedom denied? Did it provide for a government to be administered by a dictator? How could it be brilliant if it did? And if it did not, why are they stuck with one?

You make a good point about the American Constitution and slavery. "All men are created equal" it says and yet slavery continued. The reason it continued was a matter of practicality and compromise: the Southern colonies would never have agreed to enter the union if it hadn't. But the Constitution embodied our nobler aspirations, and for the country to defy these aspirations created a hypocrisy that it could not long endure. It took the bloodbath of the Civil War to resolve it.

I cannot defend the treatment of the Native American population. If one understands that, to the 19th century farmers of the Eastern Colonies, and to the millions of immigrants who came here from all over the world, America meant primarily Land, one can get an idea of why the West was seen as unused property, and get some understanding of what precipitated the conflicts. As far as Canada goes, I'm sure the enlightened British attitude toward Indians helped, but I'm also fairly certain that the lower population levels contributed to better relations there.

InOBU, you are right. The Monroe Doctrine primarily targeted British expansion in the Caribbean at the time it was introduced. I'm not familiar with the Malvetas War.

Greg..is there really any reason for us to argue the relative degree of freedom between the people of the USA and those of Cuba, when I'm quite sure we're both know the answer?