Or at least I think that’s what they’re doing here. Or maybe they’re just lecturing us about mandatory healthcare insurance, which clearly seems to have some religious significance in Germany.
I mean, we all know how Germans are famous for being so religious and all, but I had no idea that they had begun spreading their evangelical zeal to Obamacare, of all things. But spread they have and we should take their prosthelising in earnest (they certainly do).
Why just take a look at some of the deeper observations to be found within this religious tract, I mean Spiegel article:
In Germany, people are baffled by how hostile a country as religious as the United States can be to the principle of mandatory healthcare insurance.
The US comes across to not only Germans, but to many Europeans, as a religious country. Don’t religious Americans love their neighbors?
“For me the US is a very religious country. It doesn’t matter which religion I look at — love thy neighbor is a very, very important point in religion.”
For her, the apparent deep religiousness of many Americans doesn’t jibe with their unwillingness to be part of a healthcare community.
Well there we have it. Sin and transgression everywhere you look. The devil has entered our US-Amerikan house and will divide and fall it. All because, well, I’m not really sure why. But I think it might be because we as Americans don’t worship mandatory healthcare insurance like other folks do. Amen.
Thanks, Germany. We’ll come to see the light yet. You just wait and see.
Germans Can’t Fathom US Aversion to Obama’s Healthcare Reform
Observing Hermann 
“Don’t Americns love their neighbors” the article askes.
Sure. That’s why they’re so generous and charitable. A third of all world’s international relief aid is private, individual donations by Americans. It’s more than all European governments combined.
The question is: do Germans hate their neighbors so much that they want their neighbor’s neighbor to be forced to pay for everyones’ needs by compulsion?
AMEN BROTHER!
If Germans had the money paid into obligatory health insurance over a lifetime and would stop their Sprechstunde tourism, then they would be millionaires. But as it is, their doctors are sailing the Med. What neighbor? That´s someone to be inculpated.
Americans get pretty defensive (or aggressive-defensive) when that article comes into play. I don’t really get why, I must admit: It doesnt seem to be an attack as much as an attempt to explain why Germans are so confused by Americans these days.
I am german of course, so I’m sure I don’t get it either. Maybe it’s of therapeutical value for us to discuss these topics.
For younger Germans like me, who remember Reagen as their first american President, the US are something like that uncle from a side branch of the family: As a kid you found him funny and joyful when you saw him on one of the family reunions. As an adult you start realizing he is a drinker who constantly beats up his wife and shits into the neighbours backyard at night.
Because we frankly don’t give a shit about you, and your obsession with us is irritating as hell. Like that really creepy ex-girlfriend that continues to call/text you at all hours of the day and night, despite the restraining order.
How about this theory: since we aren’t German, don’t live in Germany, why the heck would Germans think we would want to live as they do?
We get defensive, because we hear the same damned questions over and over. Nearly 30 years of that broken record in my case, and it’s always based on some faint silhouette they got about the US on TV.
I think you’re a troll, Gabe, and about as German as my Aunt Bessie was, but thanks for that provocative take anyway. Ya’ll come back now, hear?
Ok, obviously a Linke party member here, maybe even a young German, whose “buckelige Verwandschaft” was lucky that Reagan (spelled with “a” not “e”! dude) and Roosevelt saved his unborn buns from the eastern hordes and facists, which he has long forgotten in his Hartzworld of rotten thoughts. Freiheit is not his field, his phrases well indoctrinated.
I know what you mean Gabe. I would prefer to stay home instead of traveling hundreds of miles to meet with strange, distant cousins who almost always want me to pay for their dinner.
Whether the U.S. government should force my neighbors who would prefer not to buy health insurance to pay for it, is an entirely different question. By the way, I already pay for my neighbors’ health insurance through Medicaid/Medicare and my state’s children’s medical insurance. I certainly wouldn’t mind expanding these programs to cover more poor Americans instead continuing to pay for a withering military alliance – especially when others in that alliance rarely pay their fair share.
On a related note: http://twitpic.com/9lqx2x
I’m not sure, but I think Gabe (not to mention any number of well-fed German youth) would prefer the Albanian model: http://www.mltranslations.org/germany/Hoxha.htm