Team America wasn’t a documentary. 
The Thirty Years War, WWI, WWII, Stalin, Franco and the Holocaust did not spring from nothing. They sprung from Old World norms.
To be sure. But to be fair, Europe is also responsible for some bad things.
Well, balance is required. They also gave us Abba.
thanks for the concern, but the search option is available.
that slate article was interesting. i wonder how much of that was written tongue-in-cheekish…
What are you on about?
Europeans are simply less tolerant of people who are culturally different than Americans are. The desire to make everyone in France dress alike is a perfectly natural outcome of the historic European idea of ‘national culture.’
The main issue for me is societal cohesian. The (face-covering) burqa is an unassailable barrier to integration for the women who wear it in Europe, there is no opportunity for them to interact with non-muslims in a normal fasion. This is afterall the point of the burqa, to isolate your ‘possession’ from other people even when she’s out of your dominion.
This is bad for both sides, since a lack of interaction between immigrant and native communities inevitably breeds hostility. And not unjustifiably IMO, since the burqa is indicative a complete lack of desire have a 2-way exchange between yourself and your adopted country, you just want to take the advantages that living in a modern developed country gives you with giving anything back. Why should we even allow immigration on those terms? What are we getting out of it if Muslims just form isolated communities that only interact among themselves?
I also think that to some degree the burqa issue is really about how Europe deals with immigrants, and how much give and take there should be. This is difficult to mention in politics without racism coming up, so you get things like the burqa being brought up in isolation without discussion of the related issues.
Personally I come from the perpective that religious beliefs shouldn’t grant you any more rights or permissions under law than those without them get. So unless I’m allowed to just make up random shit to believe in so I get to do what I want there needs to be some balance. And since I wouldn’t be allowed to walk around wearing a full-face covering I don’t see why they should either.
It’s true, American are known round the world for being a non-nationalistic, highly tolerant non-racist people.
Pull the other one!
Really? Can you prove that?
Have you ever actually visited any countries in Europe? Seriously? There is no national dress anymore, there are vague trends that prodominate but you see all sorts of people from all over the world in most European cities, and especially amongst the younger generations you would be hardpressed to identify a person’s nationality by their garb. London is about as multicultural as a city can get and has been for many years. I’m not going to defend the French as I don’t know that much about France and its culture but saying Europeans are X or Y is largely meaningless.
The “new world/old world” paradigm is rubbish. Some people have an idea that Ireland is still a mono or duo-culture but any visitor to Dublin in recent years would see that people from all over the world live and work here, most do so comfortably.
Good point. Please provide support with examples of successful New World political movements based on turning religious groups into lampshades, nationwide bans on religious clothing (Clue: Mexico) and periodic mass murder of minorities (Clue the US and Native Americans).
You will find few in the last couple of centuries. While it is true the Europeans have pretty will calmed down since the last time the New World had to rescue the Old, the cultural underpinning of nationalism runs deep in Europe.
What is this, some long-haired, dope-smoking Italian that worships the Flying Spaghetti Monster?
Most Americans aren’t riling against the Arizona law, mainly the media and the current administration.
Although I don’t know if nationalism is any stronger in Europe than in the USA, there is nothing wrong with nationalism. The nation state is the best frame we have for creating successful and prosperous societies. And while it is true that Europe has been home to some rather bad things in recent history (say, last 500 years), Europe has also been home to most of the good things.
How about racial segregation until the 1960s? (it’s difficult to even consider the US particularly civilised until that was finally abolished)
Bombing of abortion clinics?
The rabid right wing declaring that Obama is a Muslim? How would that even be an insult if the people didn’t already dislike Muslims?
I’m don’t want to generalise, I know the majority of American agree with none of those things, but to hold America up as a paragon of tolerance is bullshit. And there is no way on Earth you could argue that the U.S. is less nationalistic than Europe.
Europe and the U.S. have much the same issues (one would almost think that it’s because both are made up of humans), they just have different forms of expression.
Why the hell else was it invented? I can’t prove it, but given the lack of any other sensible explanation it’s a pretty obvious conclusion.
Just to support this - such a move would be seen as perfectly reasonable and covers the alleged key concerns. There is upset and outrage amongst the more liberal of us across Europe because the obvious objections are about multicultural integration versus multicultural existence. However, we’re not a cohesive group (indeed, neither are ‘Europeans’ any more than ‘all Americans’) and the concerns raised are more subtle and nuanced. That means that we don’t really have the opportunity to carry out the yelling and abuse that we tend to see from our friends across the pond.
I’m talking about the present and you are talking about the past. Indeed nationalism exists in Europe (as it does in North America0 but for over 50 years, European nation states have been committed to assembling an international framework of cooperation to insure that past evils would not be repeated on this continent. Most prosperous European states have had mass inward migration in the same period that has undermined the idea that each European country is an ethnic monoculture.
Sure Europe has problems with racism, sectarianism (my own country being one of the unfortunate exemplars of this) but look around you in most major cities. The idea that somehow the Old World is full of tired old singular cultures and the New World is a multicultural paradise by comparison doesn’t really make sense to me, I’ve been in parts of Europe that have been multicultural and I have been in in parts of the US that have been ethnically, culturally homogeneous. Indeed, as a percentage France and Germany have much larger Muslim populations than the United States has.
There are bigots in Europe and there are bigots in North America. I won’t argue with that. Talking about Europe or Europeans in the singular sense with regard to burquas or other issues relating to Islamic cultures is somewhat useless. The integration of Muslims is a significant issue in certain European countries and not so in others.
FWIW I do not support any country that would ban an item of clothing all out.
Did you have any response to post #8, which discussed a women who chose to wear the burqa of her own free will?
It seems in that case this is very much a ban on the right of a citizen to disagree with male authority - the (mostly male) authorities in France want to tell her what she should and shouldn’t wear.
Regards,
Shodan