Adam seems to have his head up his ass regarding other countries.

When people ask him to not blame the civilians for the conditions in the Middle East, but to blame instead the despotic leadership, he asks "what part of Canada did they get the leaders from?" He's implying that the leaders are drawn from the same pool of people that have to drive cabs and work for a living. He forgets that in other countries, power might be tightly consolidated to a royal family, high party officials, and/or the upper echelons of the clergy. And he hasn't updated his opinion to reflect the Arab Spring, in which the people are indeed rising up to cast off their fundamentalist leadership, at great risk to their own lives and with no guarantee of success.

On the whole, we make more social progress than they do, because in our country, we're allowed to criticize, and our leaders are constantly facing some sort of opposition. As long as that one thing is true, we'll be better off. But we're better off in other ways as well, in ways as simple as the act of going to a bar, having a cold beer, and meeting a single woman. In some neighborhoods, she might have even walked to the bar herself without enduring anything more rude than a cat call. And there is a generation of young men and women in Saudi Arabia who wish they had that opportunity.

But, despite our progress, our politicians are still these weird sociopathic robot-people, and not really a cross-section of our citizenry. Thanks to our progress, they don't really thrive when they focus on stoning adulterers to death, or persecuting Jews, or forbidding women to drive. But, since we have a lot of old and frightened voters, and a powerful religious lobby, they still seem to devote a lot of resources to putting pot smokers in prison, and keeping nipple slips off broadcast TV. I'm sure Adam would hate to be visiting Amsterdam and be constantly hassled about the legendary American fear of pot and breasts. Since he's a citizen of Los Angeles, California, would they be afraid he came to Europe to spread his agenda of draconian parking enforcement and graffiti on every street sign, and breed a generation of building inspectors?