Richard Jernigan -> RE: American Freedom? (Nov. 28 2012 20:25:02)
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ORIGINAL: Flamencito Why are lots of US people convinced that their system is the best in the world, while they have never experienced living in another system. IMO being happy about the system from your society is different from 'knowing' it's the best system in the world. I have lived in Canada for a year. Great country... But one thing i noticed is that there is no public debate about the system, like for example in The Netherlands. It seems to be more like: you are with us or against us... If you don't like the financial system or social system, soon people will judge those for: 'being a socialist' without even knowing exactly the reasoning behind it.. Wondering what you guys think about these questions from outside.. I spent six weeks in Europe this spring: Italy, Germany, England and Spain. Even with their financial problems, infrastructure and health care are better in Italy and Andalucia than they are in Texas, one of America's most prosperous states. Germany is obviously far better off economically than the USA. My ex-wife's grandparents were Norwegian. We visited her Norwegian cousins years ago when our children were in school. One of her cousins was a high school teacher. Public education in Norway was vastly superior to the USA, despite the fact that our children's school was selected as one of the 80 best high schools in the USA, and the principal (headmistress) was invited to dinner with the President. Still, most Americans believe our political and economic systems are the best in the world. A very effective campaign tactic for the Republican presidential candidate in the recent election was to claim that the Democrat candidate wanted to make the USA more like Europe. One of my close relatives reacted with horror. She is an educated woman who has lived overseas, though it was in the Near East many years ago. Most Americans of both parties think the USA runs a large government deficit and borrows heavily because government spending is out of control. Total taxation is the USA is 26% of Gross Domestic Product, while in northern Europe it is about 40% of GDP. Northern Europe has lower unemployment and a higher growth rate (except for Norway, where the growth rate is lower, but unemployment is only 4.5%). We have a range of paths to fiscal stability. We could eliminate the deficit entirely by raising taxation to the European level and maintaining government spending at its present rate. We could eliminate the deficit by dismantling Medicare and Medicaid, seriously reducing other government spending, and keeping taxation at the present rate. Or we could do anything in between. Yet when I point this out, most people I talk to are either incredulous, or simply don't understand what I am talking about. Why is this? you ask. I have a few ideas, but I remain puzzled. As the son of a military officer my childhood was spent in many parts of the USA and abroad. Unlike most Americans, I have the immigration stamps from more than 50 countries in my passport. I have worked a significant amount of time in Europe. I'm not a typical American, but I'll take a shot at answering your question from my point of view. America is a huge country, and hugely diverse. It is more culturally and ethnically diverse than Spain or the United Kingdom. But hardly any Americans speak a foreign language except recent immigrants. Relatively few Americans travel outside the USA, and when they do it is most often to another English speaking country, or as members of tour groups who are thus pretty well isolated from foreigners. All over the world you meet young people who are traveling to experience other cultures. Most of these people are Europeans. Few Americans are among them. So, much of the American attitude of superiority stems from a lack of knowledge of other countries and cultures. A required article of faith among American politicians is "American Exceptionalism". Anyone casting doubt on this belief will lose votes by the tens or hundreds of millions. According to this faith, America is exceptional in its devotion to democracy and personal freedom, and to the "free enterprise system." America is far more religious than Europe. American Exceptionalism extends to a belief that American virtue springs from being specially favored by God. In the minds of many this extends not only to the Constitutional guarantees of individual rights, but to the capitalist economic system as well. America spends more on the military than the next dozen or so countries combined. Yet cutting military spending is another loser of giant slices of votes. Much of these attitudes may result from our history as well as from our insularity. We see ourselves as the first to rebel against oligarchy. We see ourselves as the first to establish personal freedoms through the Bill of Rights to our Constitution. We see our conquest of North America still through the lens of Manifest Destiny. Divine Providence, or at least fate backed our land grabs. We see ourselves as winning World War II. The average American is ignorant of the role the Soviet Union played in WW II. The average American is unaware that British Empire troops significantly outnumbered Americans in the D-Day invasion of Europe. Yes, we played a decisive role in the conflict, but you won't see many foreign allies in American WW II movies. We emerged from WW II as the only industrialized power left standing, and as the Leaders of the Free World. There is enough truth in this to make it a powerful idea. We remade Japan. Not in our own image, as we meant to, but still very different from the militarist imperialist pre-WW II Japan. We helped to set western Europe back on the course of liberal democracy with the Marshall plan of economic assistance. We won the Cold War against the Evil Empire. Or so we see it. As an active participant in the Cold War, I was aware of the severe internal stresses that weakened the Soviet Union nearly to the point of collapse. I knew D1ck Perle, the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy who coined the phrase "The Evil Empire." Of all the U.S. Cold War leaders I knew, Perle was the only one who scared the piss out of me. He feared our allies nearly as much as he did the Soviets. But the public attitude, promulgated by our political leaders, was that we single handedly defeated the Soviets through our superior economy, adherence to freedom and military power. There's a considerable element of truth in this. I'm proud of my small role in the effort. But the Soviet Union played a very considerable role in destroying itself. We prevented the encroachment of communism in other places--well, except for Vietnam and Cuba--even at the expense in many cases of installing or propping up right wing dictators. So we see ourselves in a rather heroic light. We must be doing things right. Those other countries we left behind when we came here are doing things wrong. That's why we didn't need to debate basic issues for quite a while. When I worked on contracts for the British government, an English friend asked, "Why do you bother to have elections at all in America." My response,"???" He repled, "Both parties are the same, there's not a pennyworth of difference between them. Why not just alternate and save yourselves the trouble?" I am reminded of Dorothy Parker's comment about a stage performance by the famous film actress, Katherine Hepburn. "Last night at the Shubert, Miss Hepburn ran the emotional gamut from A to B." At that time in Britain, major industries like coal, steel and aerospace were nationalized, but Labour's popularity was seriously on the wane. Now I think there is a serious difference between the parties in the USA. One wants to slightly expand, or at least maintain our partially built welfare state, which originated in the Great Depression. The other party seriously wants to dismantle the whole thing. The political spectrum has shifted far to the right in the USA since my youth, and the electorate is split right down the middle. RNJ
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