Honest question; embarassingly backwards as compared to who?
I mean, there are over 200 sovereign nations on the Earth, and of those precisely seven - that’s 7 out of 200+ - formally grant full rights to same sex marriages: Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, South Africa, and Sweden. That’s it.
So if the USA is “Backward,” so’s most of the world. (And of course, in fairness, some US states do recongize it.) It hardly seems a fair appellation of the term “Backward” unless your position is that almost the whole world is, too. Which is a fair opinion to hold, but then you’d have to admit the term has little relative meaning, and the topic of the OP is “Is America Really Backward Compared To The Rest of the West.” On this topic, no, America is not; they’re just like MOST of the Western world.
As compared to most countries - perhaps not most in the “Western World” but most in the world, anyway - the United States is a beacon of freedom and justice for gays and lesbians. There are still a lot of places in the world where being gay will get you executed. They ain’t holding Pride Parades in Tehran or Riyadh.
Seriously? Like, you’re not kidding? Freedom of expression is backward?
See, here I thought that political oppression was backward. If you asked me to name countries that were backward when it comes to limitations on the freedom of expression I would have cited places like North Korea, China, Saudi Arabia, places like that.
Sure, most of the world can be backward. Chaina and India, the two most populous countries were incredibly backaward in many respects. So yes, backward has nothing to do with how many countries or people are involved. I don’t really think the US is a beacon when it comes to GLBT. Sure we might be in the top 25%, but those two things I mentioned keep us from being abeacon to any country on glbt issues.
That is a fast and loose definition of physical harm. Basically, anything negative can cause physical harm because it can lead to loss of reputation. Same thing as an incorrect religion
People who believe in creationism cause much more harm that lying about a celebrity. When religious people believe stupid shit like prostitution is immoral, nudity is immoral, or basically any kind of sex except for husband/wife missionary is immoral, then it closes off a hell of a lot of opportunities for people than someone starting the rumor that Paris Hilton is a man. You can’t imagine religious people protesting immoral industries? When a nipple on TV causes a 6 figure fine from the FCC, when strip clubs shut down, when creativity in media is stifled and muzzled, that doesn’t harm people?
Stating your religious belief is fine, as long as you don’t publically lie about it. Lie to your kids about it is ok. But going on TV and saying homosexuality is a sin is a lie, it’s harmful, and whoever says it should be fined and his speech restricted because factually, being gay is not a sin. How many gay people in history have been killed because of such childish and disgusting beliefs? Don’t tell me false religious beliefs have no harm
The topic isn’t about whether or not the idea of factually incorrect things being banned is wrong. I get it. Christians outnumber me. Christians have more power than me. In any situation, I would fight to maintain my right to say things I want based on what I believe regardless of what the power structure wants me to believe.
But I did not come into this topic with that argument. I believe Curtis posed whether or not the kind of liberal restrictions he finds distasteful makes America inherently better than those countries that practice it. I disagreed.
My entire argument is that religion should be curtailed. Religion should be restricted, and any arguments coming from religion is inherently wrong and ignorant. Those things should be banned. I’m not arguing about some double edge sword. I want religion to stop spouting it’s nonsense and want atheists to continue spouting theirs. Why? Because atheism is correct and harmless while religion is the opposite.
Freedom of expression, good. Promoting hatred, bad. It then comes down to finding a balace between the two, e.g. the judicial decisions in Keegstra, Andrews, Ahenakew, Krymowski, Harding, Presseault (as to sentence), and Elms, of which some find for and some find against.
I think our courts have done a good job at developing the various aspects of the test, such that only the most viscious hate mongers get convicted.
I do not support the use of various Human Rights tribunals to decide on matters of free speech, e.g. Bahr (fined) and Rogers Publishing (Mclean’s/Steyn) (dismissed), for I think that freedom of speech is so important that prohibitions should be tested by the courts using a high bar, not tribunals using a low bar, and also because I think that the offenderatti use tribunals to try to quell free speech, as opposed to try to quell promotion of hatred.
(You can find the above referenced decisions at http://www.canlii.org/en/index.php ; just type the name into the case name box, hit enter, and shazaam!)
Yeah, that’s where I stand. I might not agree with what you say, but I’ll defend to the death my country’s right to say, “Hey, that’s enough! Knock that shit off!”
Simple ideas and words not so much. Incitement against groups can be harmful to a society and so various nations have established boundaries beyond which expression is not acceptable.
He’s talking about Europe & Canada, *not *China & India.
Besides, he *still *hasn’t proven that bit about the “favourite” claim of the evul liberals & leftists. I’m pretty liberal, for Texas. I think some countries do a few things better than we do & we do a few things better than they do.
Basically when you have comparable countries you almost have to examine how they operate since their operating pressures are similar to your own. It would be eerily myopic to consider that nothing any other “western” nations does compares in quality or outcome to your own country. I mean that would be blinkered and insular to a degree even beyond this OP. Hell, given the proclivity of the US right to champion states rights as a vehicle for experimentation in delivery of social programs I’m surprised the OP hasn’t extrapolated that to encompass nation states.
I find that US exceptionalism is often raised when comparisons are made between the USA and other first world nations: universal health care and handgun control being two.
Suppose I agree with you that it’s okay to restrict what David Ahenakew said. Are you actually, really saying that a country that decides that Canada’s particular approach to stopping hate speech is slightly too low a bar for restricting speech (after all, it’s not like an American can legally whip up a race riot) is backward? You’re going beyond saying that you prefer the Canadian approach, and saying the United States is backwards? That’s… amazing. I’m honestly stunned you’d say something like that. Is every country backwards that doesn’t do things in precisely the Canadian fashion?
Logically, we must also conclude Canada is, by comparison, hopelessly undemocratic as compared to the USA because our Senate’s unelected. That’s no more extreme than your position - in fact, far less extreme, IMHO.
I’ve sepnt about six weeks in Europe in the last two years.
As an American I was often ashamed of myself.
Ashamed of my inability to speak French or Italian as well as everyone around me spoke English. Ashamed of the awful public transportation in America compared to the easy to use trains and buses in France and Italy. Ashamed of the disgusting items that pass for produce here while sniffing a French melon or inhaling French cherries. Ashamed of wonder bread when eating pizza in Rome.
As a Jew I love this country. The Euros threw my ancestors out. The French literally sentenced my childhood best friend’s mom’s family to death camps just because she was Jewish. She was the only one out of her family to survive and had the tatoo to prove it.
But I swear to god we have a hell of a lot to learn from Europe or Canada. It is ludicrous to pretend otherwise.
Well, we can’t compare to the things you mention for very good reasons, and reasons that have nothing to do with inherent American inferiority. We are too spread out and too many people enjoy the luxury and convenience of automobiles to have public transportation systems of the type found in Europe, and I’d wager that if that had their druthers and/or a chance to experience the openness, lack of overcrowding and freedom of movement that we enjoy in terms of travel they’d opt for the same. Our produce has to be stored, refrigerated and travel more than does produce in Europe, and while I don’t know this as a matter of fact, I’m of the impression that we enjoy vastly greater selections in almost everything we want to purchase, whether produce or other grocery items. And quality breads are easily available for those who want to seek them out and are willing to pay for them. And quality breads (and pizzas) are available for those who are willing to seek them out and pay extra for them. And why would we be expected to speak Italian, French, German or any other languages better than they do English? English is the de facto common denominator language throughout most of the Western world, plus those countries are right next door to each other and it’s only understandable that people over there would be more likely to be fluent in their neighbors’ languages than we would be over here, with two huge oceans between us and a huge country of 300,000,000 people, most of whom are never gonna set foot outside the U.S.
Plus we’ve never shipped anybody off to concentration camps to be gassed either.
I get really tired of the incessant claim almost invariably coming from the left that America and Americans are so inferior to a region of people whose countries and lifestyle are nothing like ours and never can be because of dissimilar geographic and demographic reasons. And Canada? I’d wager there are far more Canadians seeking to immigrate here than there are Americans seeking to immigrate there.
I thought the US had relatively good public transport? San Francisco’s BART and the subway in NYC seem pretty good to me.
The difficulty is that you shut down discussion on issues like immigration, which in turn leads to more problems. Witness the crime in Paris, London and Canada. An open discussion of these things gets shut down straight away and in Canada they even avoid keeping data.