I was born and have lived most of my life in the US, but lived in France for a decade. I found no substantive difference in relative freedom between the two. I formed the general impression that there was significantly less social and economic mobility there, but for nearly all that time I felt relatively more free of things like risk from violent crime, and had I been elegible for the medical safety net, from worrying about high medical bills were I to become sick. So, pretty much a wash.
So, OP, if you don’t mind, what’s your opinion, and why do you ask?
By “Europe” here, do you mean “the UK”? Most other European countries do have constitutionally protected rights which the courts can and will enforce against Parliament, as in the US. The range of rights which are protected is not necessarily the same as in the US, obviously, and in particular cases you could argue that the US has a better list or that some European country does. But the basic idea of explicitly-enumerated inalienable rights is certainly there. Except in the UK.
The UK specifically, but the Europe as whole has a larger less specific set of rights. Rather than a small number of easily enforce rights. I mean what how you enforce “the rights of the elderly to lead a life of dignity and independence and to participate in social and cultural life.” in a meaningful way ?
You’ve got your European Convention on Human Rights, parts (but not all) of which are fairly vague and flannelly, but you also have constitutionally entrenched Bills of Rights expressed in various ways, and enforceable in various ways, in most European countries (but not the UK). Some of these are quite robust.
The point is, it’s a mixed picture. In any European country, you have to look at whether and to what extent the ECHR is enforceable at the national level, and how the courts go about doing that, and also at human rights protection at the level of the national constitution, and how effective that is. The UK, I think, is at one end of the spectrum. It’s not difficult to find instances at the other end where bill-of-rights type protections are arguably better than in the US. Certainly, I think griffin1977’s implication that people in Western Europe lack “a small set of unalienable rights that written down explicitly and are pretty much unalterable, no matter who is in power” is not generally true.
Don’t forget Europeans generally have the right to self-determination. Very much a live issue for the true Scotsman today.
Incredibly, going from what I read on this forum, many Americans believe that their fellow citizens don’t have the right to self-determination. It is apparently treasonably illegal to attempt to secede from the United States!
Argent - you’re an intelligent doper and I really like you, but can you please stop trotting out the (quite frankly offensive) “if you people in Europe had had guns you wouldn’t have been conquered in world war 2” bollocks. Arming the general population to the eyeballs in WW2 (or indeed later conflicts in Europe such as the Balkans) wouldn’t have made any difference. A professional army will shred a local militia to pieces easily, plus actually having a gun doesn’t necessarily make you willing to use it when you know your country is being overrun and looking down the barrel of surrender (like the French when they were invaded).
“Great, we’ve got rifles! Oh no, we’re being shelled by artillery from a mile away. Guess we’d better fire ineffectually at it until the bombers take us out.”
It’s all very well for people with guns in their cupboards to talk about their value to national safety when they live in a nation that has never actually had any kind of sizeable foreign force set foot in it.
It’s a particularly ridiculous argument because it’s not like there’s been a bunch of attempts by dictators to take over the US that were foiled by our well-armed citizenry. The rise of European fascism was due to a great number of factors, almost none of which were, “People didn’t have enough guns.” The lack of an American Hitler (or Mussolini, or Franco) was because most of those factors didn’t apply to the United States, or weren’t severe enough to make totalitarianism seem like a reasonable alternative. In this context, at least, invoking the second amendment is a pure “magic tiger-repelling stone” argument: there’s no credible evidence linking the result to the claimed preventative.
A big negative for Europe is that the tax rate is generally higher. Being forced to part with a substantial part of ones income subtracts from ones measure of freedom. The countries in the EU are also less democratic. The parliamentary democracy of each individual country is fine as such, but the institutions of the EU lack a great deal in the democratic department, in accountability, and in transparency.
It isn’t only guns. It’s also things like pepper sprays, all kinds of knives, etc which are illegal. A carpenter in Denmark was thrown in jail for forgetting his box-cutter in his car. Many dog breeds have been made illegal too, as they are seen as weapons.
And smoking is persecuted with draconian laws in much of Europe. It’s not just illegal to smoke in bars and cafes and on the job - even if your job is for instance as a lorry driver, own your own lorry and you’re the only one ever in the cabin, then it is no smoking, or if you are employed in a public institution, it is not enough to go outside to smoke. You have to completely vacant the land beloning to the institution. Some public institutions have made it completely illegal to smoke during working hours (& in lunch breaks). A region of Denmark (Kommunes ansatte skal skodde smøgen i arbejdstiden) expects to save 5million $/year with forbidding all employees to smoke on account that smokers have more frequent breaks and are more ill. There are moves to make it illegal to smoke in one’s own apartment (for fear of leaking to other apartments). And for the pussy. In Sweden/Norway/Finland/etc. it is not only illegal to sell pussy. It is illegal to buy pussy. And in Sweden it is illegal to own hentai cartoons also, if the characters could be considered “children”. Internet addresses have been blocked in many European countries for the same reason. Or for many other reasons. http://thepiratebay.org/ is closed for me. (Although of course it is easy to circumvent the Danish Digital Wall)
I know you put in that “generally”, but I think you have to compare cost/coverage vs cost/coverage: with the same job for the same company (so, in theory equivalent salaries), I was paying the same % in the US and in Spain - but in the US, I also had to pay separatedly for healthcare coverage, which my Spanish taxes covered to a much greater extent. So, my cost/coverage was worse for the US.
Some of the freedoms which vary from country to country aren’t even listed on paper. By having “the right to healthcare”, people in Western Europe get a much greater ability to change jobs than those in the US. We don’t do it more for a reason of mindset, not of actual ability.
You’re not building your argument very well. Having a constitution (most of Continental Europe’s countries have a constitution -and usually a court or some body to watch for the constitutionality of laws) does not mean that laws you’d personally consider liberticide would necessarily be impossible to pass. The burqua ban was submitted to the Conseil Constitutionel, which deemed it not contrary to the Constitution (they still put limits on it that were not in the original law).
Well, I hear the British army used to go for strolls there. And sometimes, their playground partner, the French army, would join.
The whole right to bear arms is an extremely confused issue in most American minds. It’s constantly shifting between:
-it keeps dictators at bays
-no army would dare to invade us because every American is loaded with guns and is a sharpsooter, and guns put hair on your chest
-I need something to blast the heads of home invaders and burglars
Of course, the two first arguments have never been tested in real life, doesnt mean they shouldnt be repeated ad nauseam.
AFTER the war of independence? My understanding of the British/American wars following independence was that they were largely naval and fought in the Caribbean.
I dont want to sidetrack the debate on another “You owe us. No it’s you that owe us” thing (though AT could have avoided starting the sidetrack in the first place). But the burning of the White House didnt happen at sea (that said, “a well regulated militia” showed that it wasnt worth shit in combat. As it had already done in the previous Independence war).
I dont think anybody in the West, outside of the US, think having a gun qualifies as a right or a freedom (ironically the “West, outside of the US” has had much more experience regarding oppressive regimes, and partisan/guerilla fighting). Maybe, to avoid the unavoidable dick contest, we should temporarily put the “right to have guns” on the back burner.
It depends how you define “free” and what “freedoms” are critical to you. Everything is give and take in the social contract. Euros pay higher taxes, but receive “free” medical services and have a better safety net to prevent homelessness and hunger. Certain types of speech are restricted, but the society as whole is far more tolerant than the US in regards to interracial relationships, seeing people as individuals and not as a color, etc. People don’t have access to firearms as easily, and the police don’t need to be as armed, aggressive or strict. Some of the restrictions seem oppressive to Americans create an environment where the legal system is more lenient in general and doesn’t feel the need to incarcerate every minor offender.
So what do you hold so dear it is worth fighting over? Then decide where you think you would be freer.
Have you been to New York? The smoking laws there are much more restrictive than anywhere in Europe. You can’t smoke even outside in a public gathering place.
Well that’s kind of why I didn’t say “high crime rates in the US lower personal freedom.” All I was saying was that the level of crime does affect freedom. The comment I replied to was saying that incarceration rights aren’t relevant - I mentioned two ways in which they could be considered relevant. There’s then of course the argument as to which area is impacted worse by crime. I’d agree with you to an extent - certainly I believe the UK has a higher level of less serious violent crime than the US (I’ve seen research on that too), and I would back it up anecdotally by noting that I generally felt less safe when I lived in cities in the UK than in the US. I don’t know how that applies across Western Europe as a whole, though.
Sometimes it is a matter of locking up the 1% or making the other 99% prisoners in their own homes. There are parts of England where people don’t feel free to walk on their own streets at night because they may be assaulted.
The government isn’t the only people that can restrict your freedom.
Canada. You can live in a cabin in the mountains and own lots of guns and hate negroes or live in a studio and smoke lots of weed and get lots of abortions.
Good luck with obtaining full independence for Scotland. The power of the Scottish Parliament is devolved from Westminster, not inherent. That means it can be taken away at any time.
Because I am pessimistic about human nature, I am skeptical about the value of freedom in the abstract. I want to know: freedom for whom to do what?
In his Reflections on the Revolution in France, Edmund Burke wrote, “The effect of liberty to individuals is that they may do what they please: we ought to see what it will please them to do before we risk congratulations, which may soon be turned into complaints.”
There is certainly more economic freedom in the United States than in Western Europe. That is a major reason that there is more poverty in the U.S., and less economic security.
Deer do not benefit by maximizing freedom for wolves. Neither do employees benefit when freedom increases for their employers.