So the Religious Right is spent force in the US and polticians can safely ignore it?
All those arguments about Creationism, Abortion, Same Sex Marriage are all history?
I always got the impression that there was considerable conservative sentiment prevailing in the vast hinterland outside of the liberal cities on the coast and a tendency to rely on inspiration from the Bible to help make decisions at the ballot box about which politican has the most attractive ‘values’. Is it not the case that aspiring presidents want those Bible belt votes?
In the UK a politician talking in overtly religious terms is a sure-fire vote loser. They are usually very careful about this. Remarks by Cameron about the country being Christian is simply affirming the status quo. The UK has an official religion, it works and there is no policy to change it at least from his party. That is a perfectly acceptable position in the UK and it conveniently means he has to do…nothing.
I guess the UK might one day get around to dealing with disestablishing the Church from the State, in the interests of fairness to other religions. But there is no pressing demand for it, and it would be a complete can of constitutional worms.
Biden and Pelosi are Catholics, although they disagree with some fairly core teachings of their church (as do most politicians, when you come right down to it). Their faith has been talked about quite a bit for the last few years.
Consider that this notion of “civilized” became a lecture-the-Americans point AFTER the UK, France, et al had pillaged the rest of the world and exhausted themselves in massive wars. It also conveniently ignores that much of the chaos in the world today is lingering effects of their colonialism. Euro lectures about what it means to be civilized are that much more annoying because the blood isn’t even dry on the fingers they point at us.
I suppose that is the same argument that current third world countries argue over carbon emissions- don’t look at what we are doing now, consider it in context. Because the great industrial nations burned so much fossil fuels in their industrial revolutions, they have no right to criticise us for doing that two centuries later.
Current behaviour should be compared with current behaviour IMHO.
It is at least arguable that current US Dominion and Domination over the Western World and beyond is far greater than the UK or any other colonial power ever had over their own empires- in political, social and economic terms.
So you think the U.K. and the rest of Europe (for starters) are nothing more than exploited American colonies?
I’ll nominate that one for most ludicrous contention by a Brit on this board since the time a poster claimed that the overriding reason Britain gave up its remaining colonies after WWII was not out of economic and military necessity, but due to a belated recognition that it was the ethical thing to do.
Economic, no. We don’t run their economies and force them to pay us taxes.
Political, no. Colonies had little if any autonomy, outside of what was “allowed” by the mother state.
Social, no. Countries set their own cultural standards and whatever influence from American culture they receive is through their own volition.
All the “dominion” held by America is agreed-upon by these countries’ governments. For example, no one forced Nike into Vietnam, Cool Runnings into Jamaica, and NAFTA into Mexico.
Note your own language: “vast hinterland”; “liberal cities on the coast”, “Bible belt.”
This corner of the discussion began with broad generalizations about how “America” is religious. My response has been that such broad generalizations do not describe the country at large. There are clearly areas where religion does dominate some aspects of any discussion. There are other areas where such issues never come up. Any effort to describe the situation of religion in the U.S. in single terms is going to abruptly fail with a counter example from a different part of the country. Catholics dominated the largest cities of the Northeast and Great Lakes until the urban flight of the 1950s and 1960s moved them to the suburbs. Various Evangelical denominations dominated the South and certain sections of the North, (I think of Indiana and Wisconsin in particular). The more generic “Protestant” beliefs dominated the cities of the South and other rural areas across the country. The white-abandoned cities have a mixture of Baptists, A.M.E., and Pentecostals. Even within such religious groupings, geography plays a role. The liberal white-collar Catholics of many suburban cities differ in many respects from the more conservative blue-collar Catholics who differ from the rising number of Hispanic Catholics. Their views differ both in secular politics and in religious matters.
From the 1980s through the 2000s, a grass-roots Evangelical movement made a deliberate effort, mostly successful, to use the Republican Party as a political tool. Those people are now a large portion of the core Republicans, meaning that they control that party through its nominating processes, but they are often at odds with others in the Republican Party. (The U.S. triad government with an elected executive enforces a de facto two-party system, so we often find people with dissimilar views in the same party.)
However, the Religious Right is now old enough that there are signs that it may suffer its own fragmentation in the foreseeable future. In the last few years there have been a number of Evangelicals who have promoted environmental issues, civil rights, economic justice, and other themes that were once considered (by the Right) to be the unholy domain of the “godless Left.”
The country is simply too large and too diverse for any broad generalization to be accurate in regard to religious belief or religious behavior.
This is true, it was a drain. Some bits of the crumbling of empire worked out OK, others didn’t. Hey ho.
But it is to laugh at a couple of the US posters implying that the US doesn’t run an empire. Guys, I’m sorry, but you are running an empire, and quite a British-style one too. Capital backed up by big guns. Hey, it’s a winning formula.
I think people are laughing at the thought of the UK being a colony of the US which Pjen seemed to, at the very least, be strongly implying.
I assume you’d find that suggestion quite idiotic as well.
I’m not happy with much of American foreign policy, but to suggest that much of the western world are vassals of the US is asinine and grossly insulting to the actual victims of the old colonial powers.
The UK is very definitely under immense U.S. influence in political matters. Perhaps the most extreme recent example was John Major, who was so beholden to the U.S. that he was referred to openly as “Bush’s Lapdog.”
This has been the case essentially since 1956, when the U.S. told Britain to get out of the Suez/Sinai, and Britain pretty much had to do what it was told. That is the point that many say marked Britain’s reduction to the junior partner in the transatlantic alliance.
A colony, certainly not. A “client,” not exactly. A “vassal” is much too strong. “Lesser among equals” perhaps.
Churchills assiduous courting of Roosevelt prior to the US entering WW2 really set the tone of the power relationship and led to the origins of the Atlantacist policies that still prevail today.
Suez was a wake up call for the UK and France regarding who controls the international purse strings.
I have lived all of my life in the United States, and I was born here, am an agnostic, and have never had a single, solitary person bother me about my agnosticism.
It may well be diversely expressed, but my impression of the US is that church going has a social function and the numbers attending is significant. In the UK attedance is commonly three times in lifetime: when you are hatched, matched and dispatched. It simply does not figure in most peoples lives. Nor does it figure much in politics, despite the anachronistic constitutional artifacts left over from the Reformation. I suspect the same level of disinterest is prevalent on the Continent, aside from countries like Ireland and Poland, where religion played an active part in the state politics until recent times.
It is nice to hear the Religious Right in the US has mellowed somewhat in their dotage.
He wasn’t talking about religion, he was talking about immigration and talking to voters he wants to win. Hence my use of the term ‘dog whistle’. The fact remains we don’t take religion seriously in the UK. With the exceptions i noted.
That’s why we’re the target of African and US missionaries.
I really should have put a smiley in my post. My apologies.
However, the empire of the United States is an economic one, a modern update of the British one. It’s just that Starbucks and Microsoft aren’t quite as well armed as the East India Company, say, was. Although the power and geographical distribution of US forces around the world is of an extent that would have given someone like Cecil Rhodes a raging hard-on.
As for cack-handed attempts at nation-building by force of arms, like Iraq and Afghanistan, they rarely go well. Israel has done a decent job of it though, but then it has been their own nation they’ve been building.
