# Can we identify national values?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-identify-national-values/352420>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [April 12, 2006, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-identify-national-values/352420 "2006-04-12T19:18:47Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![Andy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/aeb1de/32.png) [@Andy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy)\
**Post date:** [April 14, 2006, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-identify-national-values/352420/21 "2006-04-14T16:42:16Z")

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> [@magellan01](#):
>
> How about the idea that “the little guy can make it?”  
> Thoughts?

Without wanting to sound too cynical, I thought this was a sort of PR ploy to reassure the poor and immigrants that it wouldn’t be _this_ bad perpetually and that eventually they would be living the good life. For it to be a peculiarly US trait, could one say that it is _not_ true that the little guy can make it in most other countries?

As for my own country (the UK), over the last few years, I’ve heard increasing allusions to British values. Apparently they are, amongst others

> [@](#):
>
> “… the ideals of Britishness our commitment to liberty, responsibility and fairness…” (Gordon Brown).

and

> [@](#):
>
> …while affirming our very British commitment to the liberties of the individual…(Brown again)

The second one is rather insulting to the rest of the world.  
I don’t see how we aspire to these value any more greatly than the majority of other nations so I think it’s just meaningless bilge.

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**Author:** ![Alan\_Smithee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/2acd7d/32.png) [@Alan\_Smithee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alan_Smithee)\
**Post date:** [April 15, 2006, 6:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-we-identify-national-values/352420/22 "2006-04-15T06:35:12Z")

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Europeans seem to make a negative value of patriotism. (And understandably so, seeing what it’s done to them in the past.) Here we see it carried to a bit of a ridiculous extreme. Saying that a commitment to individual liberty is “very British” does not imply that other countries lack that value (though of course other countries hold that value to varying degrees), but that the value is integral to the character of Britain. Individual liberty as a value is as British as curry, and neither the Libertarian Party in America nor all the cooks in India can make that less so.

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