One of the favourite claims of liberals and leftists is about how enlightened and advanced Europe and Canada is compared to America. They speak of how people have better welfare, are better educated, are more “progressive” and etc. etc. But is it really so?
Racial tensions in much of Europe is far worse than it is in America. America’s last race riots were in 1992, France had one in 2005 (enough for it to become a national state of emergency). Plus in Europe far-right wing parties have much more political influence. While no American-style mainstream conservative group exists in Europe fanatical Pat Buchanan type reactionaries such as Jean Marie Le Pen wins signifcant amounts of votes in elections.
Also in Europe and Canada freedom of speech is heavily curtailed. Most notably are the banning of the denial of the Holocaust and displays of the Swastika (even in video games!) in Germany, Austria, and other countries. In Sweden a minister was prosecuted for calling homosexuality a sin. In Canada Chick tracts are banned. While you may disagree with their viewpoints everyone should have the right to say what they want as long as it is not libel or slander-and yes that includes Holocaust denial.
Thus on the balance Europe is in many ways far less enlightened than America.
France has been all over former film actress Brigette Bardot for comments she’s made about homosexuals and Muslims, fining her multiple times and convicting her twice of “inciting racial hatred”, for relatively benign comments about Muslims that amount to nothing more than complaints.
In 2004, she was convicted of “inciting racial hatred” by referring to the “Islamisation of France” and the “underground and dangerous infiltration of Islam”. She had also claimed she was against “the mixing of genes” and compared her beliefs with previous generations who had “given their lives to push out invaders”.
In 2008, she was convicted of “inciting racial hatred” for a letter she sent to Nicolas Sarkozy in which she objected to Muslims in France ritually slaughtering sheep by slitting their throats without stunning them first. She also objected to France’s rapidly growing Muslim community “trying to take over France and impose their culture, values, lifestyles” etc. on France and its native people."
Wow, she’s a regular Malcolm X isn’t she?
All in all, Bardot has been fined five times by French courts, with fines of 5,000 Euros and 15,000 Euros respectively for the last two convictions. The prosecutor stated that she was tired of charging Bardot with offences related to racial hatred.
The only reason Europe and Canada are alleged to be “advanced” by American liberals is that those countries have adopted social and economic policies that American liberals want to see imposed here. What you don’t hear about is how much these populations have government in their face, telling them what they can and can’t have, imposing huge taxes for societal redistribution, and convicting them of PC crimes for relatively mild comments that wouldn’t do more than raise a few eyebrows here if they drew objection at all, as most of what Bardot is saying is unquestionably true. It is classic Big Brotherism when government prohibits you from speaking the truth.
All of this is just more evidence to support my contention that liberalism is a restrictive, punitive and intolerent ideology and the one that is the greatest thread to the freedoms we’ve always enjoyed here in the U.S.
So your argument is that Europe is in many ways far less enlightened than America because although:
people have better welfare;
and are better educated,
they are less “progressive” because
Racial tensions are worse;
Far-right wing parties have much more political influence.
Freedom of speech is heavily curtailed.
So I may be uneducated, frail in health and mind for the want of human services but so long as I can allowed to speak racial vilification with impunity, I am enlightened?
Curtis, you know very little about life in Canada. I, on the other hand, lived and worked in the U.S. for six years, so I have some basis for comparison when I say that I feel freer in Canada than I did in the U.S.: I pay less taxes up here than I did in the U.S. (every year I compare with my brother in Columbus, Ohio, and I always come out ahead at a comparable income level). I feel less restricted in my speech, my political activism, and in the range of opinions I can access. I have fewer regulations to comply with as a small businessman. Also I was much more easily able to become a small businessman up here because we have UHC.
As the fans of Castro seem unable to grasp, a different health care system does not mitigate, or indeed have anything to do with, a regime of censorship and political repression.
There are ways in which the US is ahead of Europe, and ways in which it is behind. For all our racial flaws, and there are many, I think we do a generally better job of upholding racial equality and integration than Europe does; the way Jews, Arabs, and Gypsies are treated even in Western Europe is atrocious, and in the East you’re lucky to make it down the street without being set upon by thugs if you don’t look white. Europe, on the other hand is better for gay rights/acceptance, at least in the West. We have a better attitude towards civil liberties, in that we respect the concept at all whereas in Europe you have no right to say what you want, read what you want, own a gun, or be secure from a search, and the government may do whatever 51% of the legislature wishes in those areas. However, Europe does better in practice at upholding certain universal protections, such as the ban on torture. In science, we do better at accepting public-health measures such as vaccines and things that have kept the Third World alive such as GM crops, as Europe has gone off the deep end with regards to all the hippie boogeymen; conversely, America is behind on accepting facts such as evolution and global warming, and Europe is more likely to accept science in those areas.
I doubt that “some things are better in one place, some in another” is what anyone really wants to hear, since this issue is usually an invitation to broad-strokes cheerleading, but there you go.
In the United States, fanatical Pat Buchanan type reactionaries such as Pat Buchanan win significant numbers of votes in elections (even outside of Palm Beach).
I have real trouble visualizing a Canadian race riot …
<white person accosting a mestizo>
Pardon me, but you are a person of mixed indian and white heritage … sod off
<tips hat>
A lot of liberals (including myself) have pointed out things that Europe does better than the United States. Health care, public education, support for families, and vacation time among them.
Not one of these things has jack s— to do with freedom of speech. There is no inherent connection between good health care and restrictions on speech, nor is there any connection between the US being an extraordinary wealthy country and having few gun laws.
I think many liberals would say that they would like a country with European health care, European vacation time, American free speech laws, and California weather. And there’s nothing inconsistent about that at all.
And, I have spent most of my life in the U.S. but lived 4 years in Canada and I would say similar things. I don’t know if I actually felt freer in Canada, but certainly not any less free. And, if you count not having to worry about health care as giving one more freedom (and, clearly, it does in terms of employment, as you note), then Canada wins.
I think the U.S. does tend to have a little bit stronger civil libertarian focus in some areas, e.g., it is much easier to prove libel in Britain (not sure about Canada) and this can have a chilling effect on speech. Although strangely enough, it seems like it is most often those on the Right, not the Left, in the U.S. who want to restrict civil liberties and deride the ACLU (one exception being the area of “free speech” where one uses one’s economic advantage to translate into political advantage, e.g., the area of campaign finance, where the Right tends to want to give freer rein for that to occur).
Europe is poorer and its model of social democracy is doomed by shrinking demographics. (Note that the relative poverty of Europe is masked to American tourists by the pretty antique buildings.)
Of course affluent SWPL liberals won’t really care if the society at large is worse off, as long as their own status as the enlightened ones is preserved. And their affluence can insulate them to an extent from the wealth-destroying consequences of their ideology.
An alarming statistic was shown on the news last week that stated the United States ranks 18th out of 24 in quality of education among the 24 most industrialized countries in the world. Whether or not this is due to the tanking of our education system or the improvements to the systems in other countries is up for debate.
In many European countries prostitution is legal (with restrictions), sex, nudity, and profanity can be shown on broadcast TV, prescription drugs tale less time to get to market, and quack treatments and drugs are more widely available. Those are all example of the conservative ideals of less govt/more freedom aren’t they?
