Thanks for the links BrainGlutton. The Pew Research polls are interesting.
My friends problem is that he sees things in black and white. There are no shades of gray when arguing politics, which is why I usually avoid doing so.
It’s a bad thing because we, in particular, and more so than other nations, are addicted to that attitude, and remarkably oblivious to how or what other countries think, and reluctant to look to them for examples of how we might do things better here. It’s all part of American Exceptionalism, which is a bad thing.
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Well, ‘world standards’ are a bit, um, fuzzy, since it would depend on where in The World™ you are talking about.
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No, I mean the world en masse.
I use world standards. Where Socialism and Unionism is Left Wing and Fascism and Corporatism is Right Wing, with myriads of points inbetween and to either side. Geneally I prefer a two- or 3-axis political model anyway, but this debate was couched in binary terms of liberal vs conservative to start, with no distinction between fiscal and social subtypes.
*Far *Left. No, further than that.
…further…
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Let’s put it this way - I live in a country run by a coalition that includes the Communist Party and a national Trade Union, and I’m further Left than them.
I think this is a great question. I don’t see myself as conservative, liberal or moderate by American standards. I sit further left than any governing party I can think of. I sit further left than any communist party for that matter: place me in the CNT-FAI camp.
The liberal-conservative dichotomy leaves out American-style libertarians as well as Euro-style ones like me (and never the twain shall meet) as well as, I suspect, a host of other people who don’t fit on that axis
If marital fidelity is held in such high regard then if one uses the Bible as a truth Most american’s are living in adultery. McCain as well. The Bible tells believers" He who puts away his wife and takes up another commits adultery, he who marries one who has been put away also commits adultery" and as Jimmy carter stated one can commit adultery in his heart. Many fundies are on their 2d and third marriage.I know several.
What value is there in teaching Creation in a science class?
I think the Bible if it were taught like any other subject pointing out the errors people would soon change their mind about it being the "word of God " and realize it is in fact the word of humans.
Jesus was a bleeding heart liberal, he said the law was made for man not man for the law, and seemed to dislike the letter of the law conservatives of his time. He was called a wino, who hung around with sinners.
As for kids being better off being raised by a mother and father, that may be the ideal, but I know of many cases where it would have been better had they not; also there are many single parents either by devorice or death of one spouse have raised very good productive families.
According to some beliefs, Mary and Joesph were not really married because they never consumated their marriage.
If a person is biologically Homosexual it is not their fault or weird except to someone who doesn’t understand that they are just as decent or moral as any hetorsexual.
Monavis
Monavis
According to you.
Maybe one would look to Italy, currently on its 45th government in 46 years, or whatever? Or France, collaborators par excellence? Or England? I hear England has some mighty interesting flavors of potato crisps. Did I mention they also watch lots of soccer and get staggeringly drunk in the streets? I’m not sure what much else they have going on.
Don’t get me started on Germany and Japan.
Exceptionalism sometimes means being the only grown up in the room full of your adopted sponsees. Sometimes the sponsees get uppity. Doesn’t mean you need to be particularly solicitous about eliciting or listening to their sophomoric views. Oh please, Norway, tell us the secret of how to run the world. What’s that you say? Discover North Sea oil, have a minuscule population, and rely on the U.S. for fifty years to liberate you from the Germans and keep you from Soviet rape and plunder? Yeah, we’ll get right on that.
If the exceptionalist shoe fits . . . . noblesse oblige.
Ignoring all the assorted xenophobia in your post for now. But you’ve identified a problem. You seem to think, in an astounding display of arrogance, that America should be ‘running the world’. You’ve assumed this why? Is it because you think night makes right, and having the massive military might you do allows it? Is it that you think the US occupies some sort of moral high-ground? You mention people in the U.K. being drunk in the streets. Big deal. Been to New Orleans ever? Perhaps you consider invading various countries or propping up fascist states to be the high ground? Because it protects the interests of a U.S. based banana company, or coal company, or oil company or whatever.
I think you’re taking a very selective snapshot of the “world.” For instance, do you think the human rights practices in China line up very well with western liberal idealogy? How about equality between genders in Saudi Arabia? How about acceptance of homosexuality in Mexico?
Oh, by no means do I think the U.S. should be running the world.
The noblesse oblige comment should have tipped you off to the fact that I suspect the U.S. found itself in the default position of the only adult, solvent, non-decadent country that had not brought it self to the brink of Continent-wide annihiliation (as the Solons of Europe and the Mandarins of the East had managed to do by 1945). The Usual Suspects who are so sure that they know much better than the U.S. almost always come from countries that have taken a free ride (militarily, culturally, innovation-wise) off of the U.S. for 60 years – the decadent ruined countries of Europe who avoided starvation only through the Marshall Plan, all the client-states spared the expense of formulating their own defenses against expansionist communism, etc.
I suspect many Americans would gladly resign from the only-superpower status. It’d save a lot of money, and relieve the irritation of hearing from the self-appointed sophisticates in the pipsqueak countries of the peanut gallery.
All countries where, today, things in general go much better than they go in the U.S.
From “The American Paradox,” by Ted Halstead, published in The Atlantic Monthly, January/February 2003:
Each approach to the social contract has its pluses and minuses, of course, but on balance America has made a very bad bargain for itself and should learn from the examples of others.
And, in our case, that is what it meant in 1945. Today it means being the senile crazy uncle in the room who yet remains too rich and too strong-willed to be gracefully moved down to the basement.
I think most Americans care more about a single or small group of issues than they do about any comprehensive platform.
Most Americans are Christians, and either don’t care about religion in the government, or would like to see more of it. Most Americans either don’t care about guns, or are strongly opposed to more gun control. Most American voters strongly support law enforcement, the prison systems, and lower taxes. None of these are issues that liberals can compete on. If a liberal wins the presidency, it’s by sheer force of character, which is what Americans care about more than any of the other issues.
These have what to do with left vs right wing? Basic human rights are not a left vs. right-wing issue. Modes of governance and economics are.
Yes, but the past is prologue. You can’t expect a country to spend 50 years as financier, military surety, technological innovator, pop culture purveyor,to everyone else, without itself being changed in the process and adapting to what is – there’s no other word – an exceptional or sui generis role in the world.
Which is why I agree with much of the detailed discussion in your post – all of which (to me) seems to suggest that American exceptionalism (for better and worse) exists and has become (for now) unavoidable.
American exceptionalism isn’t really about the role of America in the world, though, it’s about the attitude displayed by Americans in that role.
But they are intertwined, aren’t they? If you know that you spent the years between 1871 and 1941 building up an advanced, peacable democracy, not trying to meddle too much in others’ affairs (sorry Spain, but they were asking for it), fostering a well-fed, fairly-well-educated populace that was agriculturally and industrially productive – while the Europeans were spending it inventing horrible doctrines and starting horrible wars based on moronic fallacies about race, nationalism, stupid economic theories, territorial expansionism, and over in the East you’ve got people thinking their emperor is literally a god and that some bastardized version of Lebensraum justifies a Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere – how could you have avoided thinking, not just “our role is different,” but “we are different?” And it’s not crazy to suggest that there was in fact something in the American character, or polity, that put them in the position of cleaning up the mess in 1945. Having assumed this role, and having adopted the concomitant attitude – at what point would Americans just spontaneously stop feeling that way, and why?
Perhaps, but the states of the Caribbean and Central America weren’t.
(When I was a newspaper reporter, I once interviewed a retired Marine who had fought in Nicaragua – against Sandino.)