Nations and their ideal primacy.

1: Pick a country.

2: Your country is the best country in the world.

3: Why?

4: Contenders face-off.

How many people? Who is in? Can I contend? Can I judge? I don’t care.

Debate period 1: Slander, sarcasm, and cynicism are welcome. But toward the country, no Ad Hominem.

Period is over when mutually agreed.

Debate period 2: Back up your statement with data only. No speculation or supposition.

Period is over when everyone is mutally bored.

Debate period 3: final statements.

Judge decrees winning nation!

…shame this never took off :-s

Hungary. The best country in the world. It is in the very geographical heart of Europe, it’s people who number around ten millions go back in time to the era of Julius Caesar, there are various archeological digs, around the capitol, foremost is one called " Aquincum"? Right near there,is a cupola enclosed statue of Maria Theresa, the most famous of Austrian emperors, who was known to in an act of desperation, with her newly born babe in her arms, and no, it wasn’t the one beheaded in the Bastille, for wearing expensive jewelry even as the treasury sank cause her beaus relentless inaptitude in governance, the baby was one of at least a dozen she had brought into the bright sunlight of the land of wine women and waltz? She asked the hussars to come north to Pressburg,and amid gypsy violins , with shimmering diamond tears, that lady of the last stand against the Ottomans, got unto her knees and begged, these formidable knights to save her and her fair land from the abomination Hungary had to endure for hundreds of years.
Vienna didn’t fall to Suleiman the Magnificent, and Austrian Hapsburgs were saved from an embarrassing fate of exile or worse.

In addition the food is great there, paprika, tokay vine and the girls are beautiful. The Budapest Opera was designed and built to scale of the Paris Opera, and it is also famous for once having possessed Transylvania, famous for Count Dracula.

Some notable scientist include Sz.Gyorgyi, the inventor and developer of Vitamin C who received the Noble prize for it.

The Blue Danube runs right through it,flowing North to South starting from the Black Forest into the Adriatic. If i could afford it, i would love to take a Danube cruise, however having been so long away from there, i strangely may become just another accidental tourist, with a scatteringly embarrassing retention of the language.

Politically, Hungary went through many transformations, from shared monarchy with the Austrians,to a brief visit to Communism, at the early part of the 20th century, to a return to Monarchy and a new republic, then domination and rule by the Nazi party, then liberation by the Red Russian army, followed by 40 years of Communism,including better years under a hybrid government of limited free enterprise, then finally the return of a democratic-capitalistic system. Through the end of ww1, Hungary lost a large portion of it’s territory, loosing parts to Romania, Yugoslavia, Italy(the Fiume Adriatic seaport, to Checkeslovakia.All through these changes, geopolitical, social, economic, Hungary was able to hold on to it’s national identity, culture and most of all it’s will to live. I designate Hungary in respect to the purposes of this forum.

errata:the ottoman general was not Suleiman, but mustafa pasha. Suleiman participated in the first siege of vienna hundreds of years earlier. Mustafa Pasha was executed for loosing Vienna, although he had all odds stacked against the allies: Poles, Germans,Hungarians, the Holy See, and the Holy Roman Emperor could not muster up enough forces to overcome the 20-to 1 disadvantage against the then almost a half a million force the Ottomans attacked with.

A truly big force for those times. Ironically, the French did not join the alliance,they were still in the hostile mindset of the thirty years’ war.