So you didn’t go to private school then?
It really hasn’t always been socially non-progressive. Many religious people, like myself, favor social policies so progressive that even enlightened people might call them extreme. Child labor laws, women’s suffrage, abolition of slavery, and civil rights were all championed by people who were religious.
Granted, they were opposed by religious people as well. So, perhaps it is the case that religion has nothing to do with one’s stance on social progression. I mean, Jesus Himself was quite religious, but He had women disciples. He declared He would free the slaves. And He thought children were so important that He said heaven is like them. Meanwhile, His detractors were also religious, and they considered Him to be a political threat.
Frankly, I don’t really identify with the label “religious superstition”. I think it’s bad luck to be superstitious. But I know that religion, like anything else, can be used for good or evil. If a person’s religion is to be kind and charitable, he will likely advocate social progression. But if it is cynical and hostile, he will likely advocate social stagnation.
Yes, I’m American
What I always get out of these threads are the two following ideas:
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Most Europeans really do not understand who we are. They tend to vacciliate around: “a source of much good, much evil, and much crap”.
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Most Europeans don’t understand what America is. They think of it like some European child, without understanding that we are all grown up.
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Most Europeans talk about Americans in sterotypical terms and grow extremely angry when Americans talk about them in sterotypical terms.
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Most Europeans are wierd from the view of the American left and plainnuts from the view f the American right. Europeans say that America is too far right, but I’d argue the accurate thing to say is that American politics have nothing to do with European politics, right or left, any more than they relate to China’s right or left.
Just sayin’, is all.
It’s true that most Europeans don’t know what ‘normal Americans’ are like. But then, most American that have visited Europe haven’t seen ‘normal Europe’.
I for one hate the “Americans have no history” attitude. (Coming from a musical background, I know that pointing out that the Chicago Symphony is older than any British orchestra silences more than a few smartarses.) I like to think of America as a child that’s had no choice but to grow up quickly. Streetwise, but at times prone to making bad or short-sighted decisions.
Yep, this is a problem. America is presented to us in stereotypical terms, by Fox, Hollywood, our own media, et al. As has been said (I think in this thread), America is a foreign country which people here expect to be familiar. It isn’t. It’s very different. And the further mistake is to expect America to be homogenous - while we revel in the differences within and between our own countries.
There was an interesting article in the Canadian “Globe and Mail” a few months back where the athiest author grudgingly proposed that most social reform was due to religious groups and most of the great criminals of the world were athiests.
But the poor do get a chance in the United States. They are certainly at a disadvantage, but if they want to make their lives better and pull themselves out, there are ways.
I was a teacher in an inner city high school and I saw many success stories. The most extreme case that I knew personally was a Black student who lived with her father who was a barber. (She went to another school, but I got to know her through forensic competition; I was a coach and a judge.) That was 35 years ago. She became the world’s first Black female billionaire.
When I was eighteen a knew a young minister who was 27. He was the first person who ever really talked to me about how “inconvenient” (his word) to be Black. (That was in 1961.) He eventually became the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.
One of my sister’s friends (who grew up in a middle income family in a small town in rural West Tennessee) won a Tony for her leading role in a Broadway play.
This happens all the time here. It may happen just as frequently in Europe, but don’t say that people don’t have a chance in the States.
That’s not really what I meant. That’s why I used the qualifier “so many”. I didn’t mean that there are no chances at all. I just meant that the odds aren’t quite as good as they are made out to be.
I was referring more to the (common, but not neccessarily prevailing) attitude that very often the people themselves are at fault if they are poor. Sometimes the universe just keeps kicking you in the “cojones” and it’s not your fault. In the U.S. people keep saying “get a job”, “get a life”, etc. but a lot of times there are no jobs, there is no better life without help from others.
There just seems to be very little compassion in some parts of American society. As always, there are exceptions: people who volunteer much of their time and resources to help others. However, in general it seems to be a very “dog eat dog” society.
Without the United States of America, the world would be a less safe and a lesser place. The excesses (in terms of litigiousness, PC madness, handguns, and craptaculous TV programmes - not excluding the GOD Channel, which would be what they showed me in Orwell’s Room 101 - my brain would atrophy after a few hours of that “discourse”) are best seen as the other side of a glorious coin. America is founded upon liberty, and there is simply no other more important quality in the world, besides perhaps truth. (Not for nothing did Jesus say “You will now truth, and truth will make you free.”)
My visit to the States a couple of years ago exceeded my expectations. (How often can you say that of a holiday?) Americans must remain vigilant, remain (self-)critical, and never tire in seeking to strengthen their institutions. The rest of the world depends upon it.
I realized the point you were making very well. I also agree with you 100%. Almost all the media here in Europe are very guilty of what you describe. The general population of the U.S. is a lot more open to new ideas and a lot more free thinking than they are made out to be here. The problem is that the “bible thumpers” and similiar groups are given so much attention, yet they are a just a very vocal minority. I guess it’s the old adage of the squeaky wheel.
well, I just had my bike stolen recently, so I guess I’m safe. Also, since I’m German, I consider it a small retribution for what happened here between 1940 and 1945. Now they can’t keep asking if I have their grandfather’s bike, because I did my part. 
Regarding the American Dream: I don’t doubt that if you’re really smart and strong, you can succeed at whatever you want even if you’re starting as dirt poor. But most people (poor and rich) aren’t really smart or strong, and most people who start off poor don’t become rich. That’s true for all parts of the planet, of course, just not USA. But I have the impression (correct me if I’m wrong) that the myth that anyone can succeed is pretty strong in USA, that there’s a gut feeling that if you’re poor, it’s your fault. That’s not, in my opinion, a good thing.
Scandinavia has, maybe, a bit too much of the opposite culture - a tendency to view success as somewhat suspect. “You shall not think you are better than us”, as the the Jante law says. (I can hear you island dwellers nodding sagely now, muttering “That explains a lot” 
Oh, and thanks for the (deserved) endearments. I’d respond with some witty and scatching retort, but I’m suffering an acute conflict between my genes and my contemporary culture. The latter is demanding that I uphold our proud tradition of a smug “We’re world champions in niceness, but we’re too polite to brag about it” attitude, while the first is yelling at me to get out the battle axe.
Someone said: “I see America as a younger brother”
So do I.
A younger brother that has grown and turned successful.
And has to endure a lot of sibling rivalry.
eleanorigby is correct. It’s a fair cop. Every country has it’s advantages and dis-advantages. Because America is the bigger and leading brother, it gets more criticized.
[I knew exactly what you meant, **SlyFrog**. :)]
gonna print this out and frame it…
I think the idea of the American Dream has changed over the years. At at time when the poor in Europe had very few prospects they could come to the United States and fine more opportunities. There was a time when we were giving away land free of cost to those who would put it to good use.
I don’t believe the American Dream is about becoming wealthy. I think it’s about owning your own home and being finacially stable and secure. You don’t have to be wealthy for that.
Marc
I’m not sure it is just that though. It’s more that the leading brother is doing a lot of things that impacts the rest of the world.
Mind you, there is enough to criticise in Europe, but Europe is still comparatively humble and unorganised when it comes to foreign policy. Which is part of my biggest criticism of Europe in that respect.
For me personally, I would also like to add that the reason that I might criticise the U.S. more on this board than Europe, is because I’m here to discuss these problems with Americans, and this board is largely American so it’s a self-perpetuating thing. You’ll see that whenever a European issue makes the board, I’m there also and I’m not afraid to criticize parts of Europe at all. Rather the opposite.
(However, I do admit that I like my own little country in terms of politics - not that I don’t have heaps to bitch about our politicians, but compared to most of even the Western world I feel that the last 10-15 years we’ve been a reasonably open-minded, no-nonsense society that lacks hypocricy to a seemingly greater extent than most other countries, and I like how we deal with issues like drugs, euthanasia, abortion, prostitution and so on. I have had several opportunities to live somewhere else and did so for a year, but often when I travel abroad I notice a contrast - mind you, there are large sections of the U.S. that are very much like this place here and I know from experience that people from the U.S. feel right at home here and vice versa, providing you go to the right places)
I wonder if it would be a good idea to make a thread in which we, representatives from other countries, post articles on the U.S. from our national newspapers, and perhaps also give summaries of what goes on here. Would there be anyone at all interested in something like that?
Texas tried it again around 1862.
Didn’t work that time.
As regards Americans being seen as overly religious: I think it’s because like any other loudmouth, the overzealous are the ones who get on TV the most often. That’s definitely not a representative sample of our people. Well, not me anyway.
There’s very few of my friends are relatives I would describe as overly religious, and even those few know where to draw the line. That’s not to say I haven’t known religious fanatics, but they would have been fanatics even if there were no religion.
But I think I can safely say I have never had my lifestyle restricted, altered, or changed because of oppressive religious fervor. Political, yes. Corporate, yes. Religious? No. God didn’t fire me from my job or make me hook up my house to city water.
When I think of a country that’s controlled by religious imposition, I think of Muslim countries, or Europe during the Middle Ages. I heard that church attendance is down to about 2% in England nowadays. Maybe in about 3 or 400 years, American will follow suit.
hehehehe, eleanorigby. Good feeling, huh.
Arwin
You can’t be serious?
coughfrancecough
and
But articles from which newspapers?
You’ll agree with me that ‘De Telegraaf’ [right-wing] or ‘Het Parool’ [left-wing] have different views on America, don’t you?
I just read a site about anti-America bias of the BBC.
http://www.reason.com/links/links081803.shtml
So, in order to give a general idea about how Europeans think of America, we’d need to post articles out of every newspaper. And I, for one, refuse to read ‘De Telegraaf’
Sure, I would.
But then, I’m a Democrat.
I said relatively. I also wrote somewhere that France and the U.S. are sometimes remarkably alike. But France isn’t Europe, and merely an example of how Europe doesn’t function as a political entity on the global platform yet. What happened with Joeshenko in the Ukraine recently was a rare example of where we did in fact exert some fairly coordinated influence.
Then again, that newspaper is available for free on the internet. You could look in the Volkskrant and NRC Handelsblad, and for important articles check the other newspapers for significant differences. On foreign matters, differences between these newspapers are often very small.
I surely hope it comes sooner… in my country too…