A problem that has bugged me for years. I went to school and college in the States, although I was born and have lived all of my post college life outside the USA.
The question is, why is the USA so different in many of its basic assumptions from most other modern democratic states; and do Americans understand this?
Axes of difference include imprisonment, the death penalty, welfare, socialism, health provision, religion etc. etc…
I am not saying that either side is right or wrong. The interesting queation is ‘Why is the USA so different from similar countries, and are Americans aware of this?’
I would be one of those unaware Americans when it comes to that issue. What is the difference between American attitudes/practices toward imprisonment and those of other countries?
As to the other differences, I see them, but I can only offer WAGs for explanations.
I am guessing that many of these differences - Europe’s abolition of the death penalty, more socialist economics, larger welfare states - have resulted from the fairly recent rise in power of socialist or socialist-influenced Labor-type parties. Either the Labor parties have made these reforms, or more conservative parties have made them as a sop to Labor’s constituents.
So why did Labor parties prosper so much more in Europe than in America? The Democratic party was never really socialist to the extent European Labor parties were; our Populist and Progressive parties were the closest thing we had to genuine European-style Labor parties, and they were puny stunted things next to their European counterparts. I think it was the world wars that gave Europe’s left-wing parties their big boost. America came into both world wars late, lost a lot fewer soldiers, and our cities weren’t bombed and shelled into rubble. The wars weren’t nearly as traumatic for us as they were for the Europeans. By 1918, there was a very strong feeling in Britain, Germany and France that the ruling conservative parties had been utterly discredited; they’d stumbled into a disaster beyond imagination through sheer idiocy, then managed the fighting with appalling incompetence. The Labor parties benefited directly from this. A similar thing happened in World War II, with the added factor that Hitler, who painted Europe’s socialist parties as “Bolshevists” to be crushed, had ended up making the “Bolshevists” look attractive by comparison.
So in a nutshell my explanation is twofold: 1) the differences you describe are due to Europe’s more powerful Labor parties, and 2) Europe’s Labor parties are more powerful because America’s non-Labor parties didn’t foul up so royally in the world wars.
The big, gaping hole in my theory is Japan. America reorganized Japan almost single-handedly after World War II - and Japan still ended up looking more like a European democracy than an American one. What gives?
The US imprisons more of its population than any other western nation- and often by an order of magnitude. Britain is closest but closer to the western average. Holland and Sweden are amongst the lowest.
The death penalty has been abolished or all but abolished in almost all comparable countries (Japan being an exception).
For the above two issues, although conservative parties may declare a wish to imprison more, or to reinastate the death penalty, this is not really done on their return to power.
I am not sure that there is any question of blaming conservative parties. Although the conservative opposition was ousted after WWII in Britain, this lasted only five years; the conservative party as been in power all but 14 years of the last fifty. Most Eurpoean countries as well as Canada, Australia and New Zealand have seen a regular swing between left and rightist governments (beware the term liberal which may mean rightist in Canada, Aus, and Japan!).
Japan again is an exception, having had rightist governments almost without exception.
'Socialism’is not the whole explanation for welfare and health care differences. Many welfare advances in the last century and early this century took place, certainly in continental Europe, under rightist regimes. Health care for the poor and nearly poor is uniquely bad in the USA compared with most other comparable countries, even if those countries have a largely privatised system of health care.
Certainly most people living in comparable counties are amazed at the vituperation aimed at ‘socialized medicine’ from the American right- although rightist parties elsewhere may criticize public health care in many ways, there is no apparent desire to turn to a system similar to that in the States.
An observation that I’ve seen made somewhere (perhaps P. J. O’Rourke, but I’m not going through everything of his I’ve got to verify) is that there is some correlation between countries that have had an aristocracy and countries that have had a successful socialist movement. Perhaps there is some truth to that, in that Americans have had less experience with the grossly inequitable and unfair distribution of wealth that exists in an aristocracy, and have thus not felt compelled to redistribute it.
Basically, we accept wealth being distributed unevenly because we tend to think of the wealthy as deserving their fortunes. Meanwhile, in a country where class distinctions have been determined solely by status at birth, people are more likely to conflate uneven distribution of wealth and unfair distribution of wealth.
“From each according to ability, to each according to need” sounds like a good idea when you think of the alternative as “from each and to each according to breeding.” It sounds less appealing when you view income as being earned.
The crucial thing that is missing here is the power of Trade Unions.
These became, and in some European nations still are, extremely powerful in a political sense rather than labour relations.Partly this is because they have used contributions (nowadays subject to a membership vote) to fund political parties.
I don’t imagine that a single trade union in the US would have the power to cause an administration to collapse but in much smaller nations like most of Europe this has happened several times.
In the UK what we would call Conservative or right wing would be considered somewhere to the left of your democrats, using similar names for political parties does not work as their points of referance are so differant.
Most European governments take a much higher rate of tax from their citizens than the US does, and we expect to get something back for it hence there is lots of pressure on European governments to provide more (yes it is a circular argument in the sense that the tax take is there to fund things at the wishes of the citizen)
The US jails around 1.9 mill(expected to reach 2mill later this year) from a population of around 260 mill, the UK currently has 66thou from a population of 65 mill, do the math and you will find that UK incarceration rates are not even slightly close to US ones.It is misleading to say UK rates of incarceration are more similar to the US than say Norway and Sweden.
The death penalty has been eliminated from all those countries who signed up for the European Convention on Human Rights.
We have had so many revolutions, coups, and sheer abuses by our leaders over the past thousand years that vesting such power in the State is viewed with a cynical eye.As yet the US has not had the misfortune to be governed by the kinds of despot that Europeans have had so there is a differant take on this.
With the Bolshevik revolution on Europe’s doorstep and growing power in cross European Communist parties after WWI the ruling classes had little option but to listen to their electorates and make the reforms necessary to improve the lot of the ordinary person.Maybe we demended more of our governments, we had paid the price in blood and loyalty so it only seemed right that we should look at our values and decide what constituted a civilised and humane society.
I think that for the most part the fact that in the US the citizen has always been able to refer through the courts to the Constitution to obtain their rights compared to Europe where we have had to demand our rights often using force (since there was no absolute guaruntee) this is one possible reason why the US and Europe have such differant outlooks.
By having a European wide constitution we may be moving toward the US way of doing things.
No. And neither would we care if we were. Everything we do is perfect, and everything anyone else does differently is automatically suspect, if not outright laughable.
If that sounds ignorant and arrogant, that’s because it is. But, speaking as a 100% American, that is, in fact, the unconcious instant response of the vast majority of people here whenever confronted with the fact that there is a world beyond the USA.
It might come from being so big and so geographically isolated that neighboring countries are a myth to large chunks of the country, whereas most of the world lives with them as an everyday fact. I mean, we’ve got high school graduates that think Canada and Mexico are states. I sometimes wonder how things would have turned out if Spain and France had maintained more of their holdings in North America, so that more individual countries would have sprung up here.
I’ve pondered this often and find it a most perplexing topic. As mentioned, it’s not only European countries that have chosen a different path, nor merely those countries whose origins lie within the compass and influence of the British Empire. Nation States that have evolved to first world status post WW2, such as Japan and Israel, have also declined to follow the American ‘blue print’ of social provision. What follows is little more than a personal fishing expedition.
I’d actually categorise the areas slightly differently from that suggested by the OP. Health Care and Social Security (including Pensions, unemployment benefits, extended help for families), Law and Order, Gun Ownership – perhaps we could also include Education given the cost differential (at Graduate level) between education in the US compared with other nations.
Not included in the list is Religion and a more stark manifestation of what we call ‘Capitalism’ both of which I think of more as fundamental influences rather than social consequences.
The Rest of the World
The various on-the-same-theme models of social provision seen everywhere except the US are, without exception, the product of post WW2 policies. Also without exception, every country either rebuilt its society (Germany, Japan, France, Italy, the UK….) or re-thought its relationship with Britain (having gained a growing sense of individual national identity as a result of WW2 (Canada, Australia, NZ……). In other words, every first world country except the US, either decided to start again with a blank sheet or had little choice. The experience of the US was starkly at odds with its counterparts.
If you then look at documents from that period – including the UN Charter, Human Rights Declarations and Legislation from every non-US Jurisdiction mentioned above, one can almost feel the sense of ideological purpose and determination to create societies based on almost utopian principles. A sense, perhaps, that so much sacrifice should be rewarded with a fairer more equitable world in which all members of a society must have opportunity and a range of basic ‘birth rights (health care, education, minimum housing standards, etc.). People certainly felt that and the result was that political parties who propagated such policies were elected around the world (including the UK where Churchill was ousted in a landslide by Atlee who immediately put in place the provision of a comprehensive Welfare State)
The US
The post WW2 influences seen everywhere else seem not to have affected the US in the same manner. There was, after all, no great need to address social imbalance. The US had never been stronger, it had emerged as a super power, there was work aplenty and the more advanced state of capitalism seen in the US had provided wealth (and disposable income) inconceivable pre-WW2. Everything in the garden was coming up roses and, as we all know, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. The US simply rolled onwards and upwards.
In addition, in other areas (beside social provision) there are other reasons why the US has developed differently.
I think it is important to remember that a very high percentage of taxation is not borne by individuals but rather corporations and indirect taxation (on goods and services). It is a common misapprehension to believe any Sate relies heavily on personal taxation. The US was more advanced in its development of Capitalism and politicians (and party funding) more susceptible to those who paid most of the tax and financially supported their parties. As a capitalist, you really want as much as possible to be provided by commercial companies rather than the State and American corporations had a fundamental influence on Government policy long before comparable countries (and still does, IMHO). The entire concept of ‘socialised medicine’ is a creation of American corporations who, one imagines, were determined not to see health care follow socialised (sic) public education into the realm of State provision.
Also, for an outsider (with much experience of the US, but not the understanding of a native), the States does seem to have an almost irrational desire to adhere to the wishes and also ‘respect’ the Fathers of the Nation. One might argue that, for some, this is a matter of convenience (gun control comes to mind).
Finally, I recall the thoughts of Robert Hughes, a noted Australian journalist, who observed that Australia was a nation formed of humble origins with no sense of expectation whatsoever. Consequently, it had nothing to live up to and had nowhere to go but up. By contrast, the US was a nation borne of high ideological principles and event higher (religious) fervour. His observation was that the US has been trying to live up to those original aspirations ever since and was therefore to be forever disappointed – or at least until it could unshackle itself from the principles of 18th century ideology. I find that an interesting observation when juxtaposed with the ideological influences practiced post WW2 by the rest of the developed world.
Is it an aristocratic heritage. As almost all countries have such a heritage, which either has or nas not been thrown off, this is of low explanatory power. Even the ‘USA’ had an aristocratic history in colonial times, it is just the date of throwing this off which matters. USA 1776, France 1789 (almost), several countries in the nineteenth century, many in the twentyieth, most effectively in this century, and Britain probably sometime before the next millennium (just). I don’t see how this helps.
Trade Unions- this begs the question of why is the history so different between the USA and the rest- it is part of exceptionalism itself. Similarly the existence of effective (or not) socialist movements- why?
The effect of WWI and WWII- I am not sure that these admitedly major traumas caused such a difference.
I am most tempted by the explanation of the ‘completeness’ of American culture. It does not need to look out and compare as everything is available within. Much the same position as Britain at the time of Empire- anything other than the British (really English- really English middle/upper class- really English middl/upper class, southern- really English middle/upper class London) was beneath interest and therefore not taken seriously.
Experience of living in the States was that news and information about the outside world was of minimal importance. Experience of living outside the States in smaller, less ‘complete’ cultures tells me that the media are forced (through globalization of culture) to continually compare themselves negatively or positively with the US, and also to actively consider differences and similarities between their culture and other peer ‘non-complete’ cultures.
The media in Britain often compares British ways of doing things with specific comparisons to other cultures way of doing things. I do not find this in the US media, especially television.
So perhaps, US culture has become forced into a feedback loop of introspection- the more introspective it is, the more intrspective it becomes. This is a challenging position, for capitalism requires competition, and the US is denying itself the required competition of ideas.
Ah, I should have thought of that. Isn’t this rather a more recent development than the other things you’ve mentioned? I get the feeling that America’s large and growing prison population has been a direct result of a vigorous “drug war” unmatched by European democracies, with its roots in the late '70s and early '80s. My understanding is that marijuana is, or at least used to be, legal in the Netherlands, and that while other recreational narcotics were illegal the laws were loosely enforced.
Yes, but you’re missing part of my point. Socialist or semi-socialist Labor has had great influence even when it has not been in power, because its rising popularity forces the conservative administrations to implement parts of the Labor programs to defuse their appeal.
A similar process could be seen in New Deal America; this was the closest the Democratic Party ever came to being genuinely socialist, but Socialist party leader Norman Thomas rightly considered Roosevelt a disaster for Thomas’ party, because Roosevelt had defused the popular anger and desperation that were needed to fuel the revolution the Socialists wanted. The same pattern occurred in the other direction in the ‘90s, when President Clinton stole the conservatives’ thunder time after time by adopting the most popular conservative ideas and making them his own. By doing so, he completely undermined the groundswell of Republican feeling that occurred in 1994.
I think London_Calling has raised several good points also, especially about American reverence for the Founding Fathers, and the desire to “repay” the sacrifices of WW2 with social reforms that would supposedly make it impossible to happen again. Your point that the American media tends not to compare its home country to others as the European media does is also valid, due as you say to America’s geographic isolation and greater self-satisfaction due to our almost unmatched prosperity; this can’t explain why European-style social structures didn’t arise here, but perhaps can explain why they didn’t spread here.
Casdave mentioned trade unions. Trade unions were once extremely powerful in U.S. politics, from the '30s through the '50s; at their peak I believe they controlled a third of the U.S. labor force. But no matter how powerful they could never sack an administration the way Casdave describes because in America the president cannot be removed by a vote of no confidence. All you can do is impeach him or assassinate him. So maybe the fact that U.S. administrations cannot be thrown into crisis at will by the legislature also helps explain why Labor politics haven’t prospered as much here.
I would say that our Conservatives are far more likely to have views that most Americans might deem to be headed toward the socialist end of the scale.
Yes there are some aspects of their policies that my seem fairly Republican but this has been a fairly recent development and has been due at least in part by the Labour party claiming much of the ground that the Conservatives once held. Historically our Conservatives have been nearer to Democrat values than Republican.
Look at the kind of policies espoused by William Haig, in particular his claimed advocacy to spend more money on the NHS, or to increase state pensions.
There is a quite a struggle going on within the Tory party itself about further integration into Europe and EMU whih is considered to be more socialist in nature.
Ms Thatcher did change the landscape quite considerably toward the Republican view of things but don’t forget that she actually did much of the work on the Maastricht treaty which her successor John Major signed.
This committed our legal system to equivalency with teh European Declaration of Human rights,w hich could be considered a mildly left biased document.
Notwithstanding all the above, it’s still wildly incorrect to say that the Tories are to the left of the Democrats. In the US of course there is no such thing as party discipline and as a result the Democrats run the gamut from folks like Ron Dellums and Paul Wellstone (on the left) to Sam Nunn (on the right) to Lyndon LaRouche (on another planet), but overall it’s a centre-left party. More “centre” than “left” by European standards but still not as right-wing as the Tories.
Another point of yours I wanted to comment on:
It’s interesting that you look at it that way, because something like 99% of Republican (or other conservative) voters, most of whom support the death penalty, will tell you that their political philosophy is deeply rooted in a mistrust of State power!
This is a huge question and the answer inevitably involves many different contributing factors. Previous answers have largely focused on a single factor that the individual poster thinks important. I’ll do the same–I’ll focus on a single factor, with the proviso that I realize that it’s not the only answer or the only factor.
In a political science course in college I was taught that a big factor in the difference between the U.S. and other countries is the fact that ethnic and cultural diversity in the U.S. is high compared to a high degree of homogeneity in other countries.
Using approximate numbers (I don’t have the actual numbers at my fingertips), the population of the U.S. is 12 percent black, 10 percent Hispanic; other various minorities together make up about another 20-25 percent, and Caucasians represent a little over 50 percent. According to studies I’ve read, demographic trends indicate that Caucasians will be under 50 percent of the population within our lifetimes (another 15-20 years, IIRC).
Compare Japan and the Scandinavian countries, where the percentage of the population belonging to the ethnic majority exceeds 90 (95?) percent. Other European nations are pretty much homogeneous; in some cases they have been bringing in other ethnic groups to fill employment gaps, but haven’t necessarily fully integrated them into the majority society (example: Turkish workers in Germany).
This creates a host of differences.
In the U.S. today, with its high degree of diversity, there is little or no social consensus on many basic issues. The U.S. has focused on creating a legal framework where people can live a hundred different ways, believe a hundred different things, and hopefully duke out their differences peacefully within a loose political system based on (often) adversarial relations. There are relatively few social guidelines and constraints (i.e. caste systems, social expectations, social consensuses, etc. are loose or vague or non-existent on a national basis); order is maintained instead by a fairly rigorous legal system that leaves the individual alone as long as he doesn’t actually break the law, but comes down hard on him if he does.
The upside of this system is that the individual is free to maximize his potential without running into a lot of social barriers; the downside is that there are fewer guidelines for individual behavior and more freedom to screw up or be cast adrift, and the laws tend to be pretty harsh when screwups occur or when drifters can’t conform to the law’s minimum requirements
The opposite situation is a society with ethnic homogeneity and a high degree of social consensus. Social consensus can provide the individual with much more in the ways of guidelines and safety nets, which allows for less reliance on the legal system to maintain order, and can even result in workable socialism. For example, some countries have traditionally had the option of socialist-style welfare systems because such systems didn’t get abused by the citizens. In such countries, there was a high degree of social consensus on how and when welfare benefits were to be used, and abusers were subject to social ostracism (which can be a powerful force in a homogeneous country with a high degree of social consensus). The downside is that the individual could get locked into a “social model” of behavior that keeps him or her from maximizing his or her potential (such as a social consensus that the disabled should stay out of public sight or that women should not be in positions of power, and so on.)
Getting back to the U.S. situation, greater experience with diversity has been a hallmark since the country’s beginning. Religious refugees from the Old World consisted of groups of people with wildly different lifestyles coexisting in the New World. When the Constitution was written, it had to emphasize maximum personal freedom in order to be acceptable to the 13 colonies, which were very different in their laws and ways of life. The desire to further colonize the country and expand geographically resulted in open borders and a certain degree of tolerance toward dozens of different incoming ethnic groups. Old World countries, on the other hand, were often autocracies, had closed borders, and criminalized and exiled non-conformists, with the aim of maintaining and enforcing ethnic and cultural homogeneity.
So, in summary, I would like to point out that the U.S. has gone it’s own way in the world in many ways due in part to a history of greater ethnic diversity. It has always had greater need to grant personal and individual freedom, and it has had less ability to enforce and maintain social consensus. With less social consensus (and hence sometimes adversarial relations between different groups), it is less able to implement broad social welfare frameworks (which require a lot of social consensus to maintain them) and has to rely more on purely legalistic attitudes to human behavior (i.e., courts, jails, and capital punishment).
In short, to a certain extent the U.S. has traditionally gone its own way because it simply CAN’T (historically and currently) apply the social-welfare approaches that other countries use.
The end.
Concluding provisos: This post is just a bare-bones exposition of a tricky point (and I typed this up very quickly), so I have obviously over-generalized in some cases and over-simplified in others. Also, the large picture has many shadings. For example, Japan and the Scandinavian countries have high degrees of homogeneity, but that homogeneity manifests itself in very different ways. Still, the principal is roughly the same–the homogeneity of both Japan and the Scandinavian countries allow them to enjoy some benefits that the U.S. can’t, and it also results in some shortcomings that the U.S. manages to avoid.
And not all European nations are the same. England is approaching U.S. levels of ethnic diversity over time. The Netherlands is also a pretty diverse country. Also, the U.S. isn’t necessarily the capitalist/libertarian haven that some people say. Most Americans pay over well 50 percent of their earned income to the government in taxes if you take into account all types of taxes–federal, state, local, property taxes, excises, sale taxes, import duties, and hidden taxes like manufacturing and production taxes. Fifty percent taxation is getting pretty close to socialism by some measures. In other words, Americans tend to be somewhat socialist in purely economic matters (taxation) and individualistic in social matters (private rights and freedoms, resistance to assimilation and social consensus). This isn’t so different from the attitudes of many European countries in terms of the big picture; the differences are ones of nuance rather than quality. In other words, America isn’t necessarily as different from other countries as some people think. Nonetheless, there remains a sense that, historically, solutions from Europe and elsewhere simply don’t apply to America with its high degree of social diversity and lack of consensus.
Axes of difference are temporary. Fundamentals, though evolutionary, are permanent. Hell, you wouldn’t have accepted the short answer. Here’s the long one:
“The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here…”
Which is a good though for every poster to bear in mind on this message board before hitting “submit reply”, but of course, it’s from Abraham Lincoln’s Gettyburg Address.
Sadly, more people remember the address than the battle it commemorated, which may stand as an early triumph of “spin.” Do you think that battle was just another bunch of people killed for the heartless ideology then in power, and their blood shed in vain, no more or less than at the Somme, or in the Grand Chaco War, or in Mao’s Long March? And was the address no more than a re-tread of Pericles oration over the body of Athenian war dead, or whatever your MP’s said while they waived Jenkin’s severed ear and cried for self-serving vengance, or just the claptrap that football coaches use at half-time to rally a losing team?
Or is America a promise that continually must refesh itself over divisive issues, like the covenant between God and the Children of Israel was continually refreshed by the appearance of the prophets. The founding fathers said nothing about freeing the slaves, but the spirit of that promise was found in their intent, as was acknowledging women the right to vote.
So as a Briton, you can relate to the situation: When Lloyd George promised to make England “A place fit for Heroes” was he at a loss to compare Hanoverian/Windsor imperialsim to Hohenzollern imperialism and so just offered the infancy of cradle-to-grave socialism, just to blow smoke at the lower classes so long as they’d keep supplying cannon-fodder for the trenches? Or was the real infant he’d hoped to save something that had been born at Runnymede and nurtured by people unthinkable in Germany like Wat Tyler and John Wilkes?
Like Lloyd George, Lincoln needed a valid reason why so much sacrifice was required. Clever rhetoric from the best speechwriters won’t cut it - didn’t for Johnson & Nixon to explain 50,000 dead in Vietnam, nor for Clinton to explain 19 in Somalia. You’ve got to give a good reason why the mission of your nation merits the loss of half a million people, and I like to think that Lincoln’s reasons was that our mission is tragically vauge, but nonetheless good
(I know - Stalin lost 20 million, but his only argument was that Hitler was out to kill every Russian anyway. And as for all you smug Canadians, remember this - you achieved dominion status right after our civil war, and so wrote your constitiution to bestow all rights not specifically granted to the provinces back to the central government. This is because you’d just seen the states rights shitstorm from our constitution’s leaving all non-specified rights to the states. I guess all those boys at Gettysburg died for you, too)
“…government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from this earth.” Are we aware that not everyone sees it that way? Usually when it’s someone who is doing worse than us, like Iran, and then we argue with ourselves as to how much this was due to our earlier activities there, and only then after the Iranians make a stink about it. Rarely are we aware of it when others seem to improve upon us, like Denmark, but then we argue with ourselves about how much credit we can take for having made that possible in 1945. Better or worses, all arguments aside, are we full of shit? Sure - there are over a quarter-billion of us - what do you expect? We’re a government of people: mean, stupid & crazy, so until they replace us with dolphins don’t expect any better. Now go down a few pints, piss on as many people as you can from the top stands at your local football stadium and stop worrying about the human condition.
Now, you really need to get something straight here, Tovey old boy: Cornwall doesn’t have any football stadiums that allow you to piss from anywhere save the back of the cow shed.
And Pjen, I understand you’re new here but for goodness sake read the rules. This is the Great Debates Forum and you should know better than to pose and phrase a reasoned, non-judgemental topic for consideration - not least cos Tovey has taken it upon him/herself to decide what’s worthy of debate. And after a post like that, we continue to have the utmost respect for Slithy Tove’s opinion.
Aren’t we overlooking one of the fundamental differences between the U.S. and most of the other Western democracies? The U.S. has a federal government composed of 50 mostly independent states, while most of the other democracies have far more power vested in the hands of the national central government.
Most of the things that the OP mentions are generally the responsibilities of the individual states, not the federal government. Gun control, for example is a state thing. I live in Texas, where the only real firearm laws are the few federal ones(waiting period, machine gun registration). Other states, such as California, Massachusetts and New York have MUCH stricter laws, including registration, ownership limits by type and number, etc… Same goes for welfare- most programs are state based, not federal.
I think the main difference between the Western democracies and the U.S. lies in the degree of power granted to the states- the U.S. federal government is considerably less powerful in relation to the states than the national government in most other nations. That’s why we’re different, I think.
I read about this “distrust of the government” in many of the posts above…then how is socialized anything seen as a solution? That has me confused. It is specifically my distrust of legislation/legislators that shy me away from more socially progressive programs, none-the-less the matters of priciple.
Another clarification I’d like to make is that capitalism doesn’t require competition. Competition is result of capitalism. We needn’t get into the whole monopoly argument, just to mention that competition for resources is a direct result of private ownership and profit incentive. As Greenspan has noted (in some article I read by him some time ago so sorry I can’t quite source it) most (not all) monopolies cannot exist without physical force (keeping competitors out at the point of a gun). This is why government interference in the economy can lead to some monopolies…they are “protected” by the government’s gun. As a result of this the government had to turn the gun on the very businesses they protected with the assorted anti-trust laws.
Anyway.
Something that still interests me is the whole socialized medicine debate. Having the pleasure to work directly with people in the UK (two are visiting us right now, as a matter of fact) I still find the idea of “health care as a right” a bit disconcerting. The American Dream is not compatible with socialized anything, at least not in its standard form. The new American Dream has seemed to shift to “Take what you can from the state and go from there.” See: public education, welfare, public housing. No doubt a mixed economy twists the morals of consumers and producers alike, I will not accept full blame on one party or the other.
Americans mistrust not government itself but government power, at least in as far s it is practiced. This is why so many turn to “The Founding Fathers” as a guide to interpretation: their goal was to limit power, not create it. A noble cause, however lost it has become.
What makes America different IMO (I haven’t seen this mentioned here) is our incredible resources. America is HUGE, and almost entirely usable. When these resources are crimped, when space depletes, we’ll find ourselves much like Europe and I don’t doubt people will cry for more socialistic programs. Pity. If we just quit breeding like rabbits now we might never need lose the profits we can take (yes that is a simplistic solution and not meant to be completely literal nor all-encompassing)
I am not fully aware of the laws in European countries pertaining to the rights of the accused, but I always thought the appearently harsher punishments in the USA were imposed to balance the difficulties in getting a conviction. Criminal Justice Laws in the U.S. greatly favor the accused, and even if hard evidence is found that shows clearly that an individual is guilty, if the evidence is not gained in an approved of manner then the guilty party walks. I know this is not the case at all in many other Asian countries, where the officer might be punished for breaking the law while gaining the evidence, but the evidence would still be introduced.
Personally, I think the whole U.S. justice system needs a major overhaul. It ain’t gonna happen though.
Engineer Don
Similar limitations on the gathering of criminal evidence pertain in the UK too.
One example I can think of is in the gathering of DNA evidence.
Our law provides for the gathering of DNA evidence in certain offences and only if the person has been convicted of that offence may the sample be kept on record.
Police may carry out testing in relation to a particular offence but then must destroy anything not relevant.
I have seen known offenders who have been taken to court on DNA evidence and because it was collected as a result of a non-qualifying offence, that evidence had to be discarded.
The police are not allowed even to keep DNA material as a referance for future investigations which might give a pointer as to who should be investigated, even if the sample is not to be used in court as evidence if it has not been collected in the prescribed manner.