I really don’t get this near-deification of the “Founding Fathers” and the Constitution/Bill of Rights.
I’m not aware of any other Western country* that constantly sits around and asks itself what people who have been dead for centuries would want/regard as the best course of action.
The idea that America is the only “Free” country is, frankly, offensive to pretty much everyone in the Western world (and quite a few Eastern countries too). Besides largely unrestricted gun ownership, I can’t think of anything the average person is freer to do in the US than they might be elsewhere.
The constant themes of “Freedom!” and “Liberty!” and “America, Fuck Yeah!” that pop up a lot in American movies and TV come across as blatant propaganda too and can be both really, really obvious and incredibly jarring as well to non-US audiences.
Freedom eh. It might be apocryphal but stories from tourists to the US about being searched at airports and enduring questioning and delays tend to suggest a national paranoia. Homeland Security.
We can understand the shock of 9/11 and maybe a period of over-reaction but that should have long passed. By contrast Britain and Europe have lived with anarchist/terrorism since the 1880s. The Prime Minister of Italy was kidnapped and killed by the Red Brigades in 1978. The** Prime Minister** of Norway, Olof Palme was assassinated in the street in 1986.
Prime Ministers. That is like the President of the USA being murdered.
And yet despite these deaths, despite IRA/Basque/Al Queda bombings, Europeans have not panicked. There are no two-hour security checkins, requirements to carry identification, newly armed guards in public places: life goes on.
That is because Europeans know such incidents are extremely rare and they are at more risk of a traffic accident than from terrorism. Indeed in the US you have an exponentially greater chance of being killed by a gun (accidental or criminal) than by a terrorist act.
To me this is completely obvious but apparently not within the US. Odd.
Yes - and I grew up with a bloody great ruined Norman Castle that dates back to the early twelfth century around the corner from my house. I used to deliver newspaper across the road from it. Amongst the many things that happened there are a six month long seige. As Wikipedia says, it was also “the scene of the removal of Edward II from the English throne, the French insult to Henry V in 1414 (said by John Strecche to have encouraged the Agincourt campaign), and the Earl of Leicester’s lavish reception of Elizabeth I in 1575.”
And that’s not even getting into the idea of knights riding around in bloody great suits of armour with swords and shit.
You see, other countries have really exciting real history too. And this is just a small town in England.
ETA:
The town is Kenilworth by the way. I just realised that I didn’t write that.
You think there aren’t interesting grave sites in other countries, or ones that are much, much older? And why single out grave sites in particular? There’s a lot more to history than visiting grave sites.
You got me curious - doing a very quick search, I found - this
(Source: NATO) {Minor formatting changes mine}
That looks like the US contributes far more than the Canada does, but part of the equation is that the US has roughly ten times the population that Canada does. It’s too early in the morning for me to do this kind of math, but it looks like Canada’s per capita spending on NATO is much higher than the US’s.
Indeed, this is one of those themes that has morphed into an accepted “truism” over the decades, one that most Americans don’t give a moment’s thought to but simply accept it as a given. I’m really hoping that the internet may have the same kind of effect on it as it has on other issues of our time and make Average Joe think about it a little more.
I’m not usually one to defend the whole FREEDOM!!! thing because it usually is bullshit, but I will say that the US has one of the better Freedom of Speech guarantees (at least before this decade).
Compared to other countries, even first-world Western ones, we place quite a high emphasis on letting even the lowliest peasant speak their mind. I can be racist, tell the world terrible things about people and corporations (as long as they’re true), insult every religion and every member of the government, say a president deserves to be hung (without calling for it outright), etc. and generally not get in trouble.
It did get watered down somewhat in recent years with the Valerie Plame incident (journalist jailed for refusing to reveal a source – not free speech per se, but protected by the same amendment) and with the overuse of umbrella “national security” censorship with no real oversight, and with bloggers being classified as less-than-journalists. Still, though, by and far US citizens can say whatever the hell they want and not get in trouble.
I figure the Powers that Be realized that rather than trying to censor, it’s easier to just let everyone howl at the top of their lungs so nobody can actually be heard. It all gets lost in the noise. Free Speech provides a nice surrogate for political involvement: if people can say whatever they want to say and get it out of their system, perhaps they’re less likely to actually take up arms and fight for change.
And perhaps the final irony is that through a convoluted series of Supreme Court decisions, this same nigh-immutable right is extended to supra-human organizations and corporations, “who” use it to spend massive amounts of money bribing government officials and entities on a scale no normal citizen can match. Again, rather than silencing anyone, let everyone shout, and let the richest shout the loudest. Citizens feel free even if their speech is worthless and unheard. Win-win, right? If only North Korea could be so smart.
Unfortunately this isn’t true any more. Our government has gotten quite paranoid about even obviously joking statements about the president and people have gotten in trouble. (Nitpick: “hanged”)
I don’t know whom “Powers that Be” is meant to refer to, because it seems like an undemocratic concept. But if you mean the founders then I don’t think they were so generous of mind and spirit. They didn’t think they were giving everyone the right to say anything. Fortunately we know better than they did.
You mean beyond the “imminent lawless action” test? If so, may I ask for a cite?
(Totally offtopic, but…) In the interest of keeping American English a democratically-controlled language evolved by common usage instead of an overly rigid tradition of useless differentiations, I offer this (basically saying that though “hanged” is more common in legal writing, both are commonly used enough that it probably doesn’t/shouldn’t matter). I just don’t think it’s really useful to make certain phrases or words erroneous if they don’t pollute the meaning of the sentence through ambiguity.
It’s just the vaporous “they”, meaning “the imaginary people who potentially disagree with my biases, and are more easily dehumanized and ignored if clumped together into an unspecific blob”
Not in the same way. We don’t view teenagers as paid labour to use as babysitters. We’d be wary enough of leaving teens in a house unattended in case of social services declaring us unfit parents, or more likely, the teens throwing a party and wrecking the place (and their livers). We certainly wouldn’t trust a 16 year old to be left alone in the house, in charge of a toddler.
It’s more like family would be unpaid babysitters, or professional childminders would be hired (especially during the day).
We lived in the US when I was younger, and my mother was horrified when friends asked if my 12 year old sister would babysit their kids. We’d be more likely to use a babysitter for a 12 year old!
