[SeattleTiger]

The question is...and remains...everyone *I* have met from Turkey says (s)he is in favor of a secular government that approaches the U.S. in freedom of speech, etc...yet, my best, closest Turk friend then recommended I read "Closing of the American Mind."

Why is that? It is a curious, and, heretofore, santimoniously 'We know better than you -- and we have had a few millenium to perfect our surveillance skills" conundrum.

[a_Turk]

I haven't read the "Closing of the American Mind."

I can tell you though, that we've founded 16 states of various size and duration throughout the past 2500 years. The Ottoman empire among them existed about 600 years.

I don't know what that book preaches..

Yet, I can see what the Chinese are doing with you, for example. These people spent 1700 years building a wall to manage us. That's their exhibited determination which lasted seven or eight times as long as the USA has existed.

We've learned the reasons for the advances and declines of the states we founded throughout history. When it's your states, it's personal.. You have not yet had the opportunity to learn any such personal thing..

Been there, done that 16 times. Maybe that's what you have sensed in your Turkish friend.