Things Americans discuss that others don't care about

[Mk_VII]

I’ve no idea what my credit rating is, though I suppose I could answer of those ads that offer to tell you.

[Alessan]

@SpoilerVirgin

It isn’t just about revering historical figures. As the previous post indicates, the views of the founding fathers, and the meaning of the documents they wrote, have immediate and direct implications for issues such as same-sex marriage. We’re not particularly interested in what someone like Daniel Boone or James Fenimore Cooper thought about 21st century issues, because they didn’t write the rules that we’re trying to live by now.

But that’s the thing. Other nations also debate the meaning and relevance of old laws and important laws and old important laws, but the debate is coached in terms of practicality, tradition, relevance and the will of the people. Nobody cares what the politicians who originally passed the laws were thinking at the time.

[njtt]

@Ulfreida

The Founding Fathers/Constitution is purely an American right wing obsession. No one else discusses either except as forced responses to the RW, and I never heard a peep about either one after high school Civics class (required at the time), until the rise of Tea Party fanaticism.

I don’t agree. My (former) brother-in-law, who is pretty darned liberal (and very smart), is obsessed with the fonding fathers, the interpretation of their opinions, and the relevance of those opinions to todays political and legal issues. Although I think he has abandoned it now, he even began to work on a book that supposedly was addressing contemporary issues, but whose argument (from the draft early chapters I saw) consisted almost entirely of strung-together quotes from one or another Founding Father.
Part of it, I must admit, is surely because he is a lawyer (a very successful one, I might add) and very much thinks like one, but to me as a (British) onlooker it is very strange to see how much he seems he has to feel that his opinions (many of which I agree with) about contemporary issues need to be, and can be, justified on the basis of what that handful of 18th century gentlemen said or might have believed. He was doing this long before the Tea Party appeared, and although he may be an extreme case, I am pretty sure many others on the American left also think and argue in this general sort of way.

[SanVito]

Things I would observe Americans debate that most Brits don’t care about:

The Constitution
Creation vs evolution
Does Climate Change exist?
Socialist/liberal elite conspiracies
American sports
Abortion
Guns
What foreigners think of American… (people/food/places)
The Bible

What Brits discuss that others probably don’t care about:

The NHS (how it’s funded, structured etc, NOT whether it should exist)
European Human Rights legislation and how it stops the UK doing what it wants
The conflict between religious practice and secular laws, eg equality laws (current hot topic)
Football (if a premier league player farts, all global news can be dropped)
In London…The Olympics (dear God, not another story about traffic jams and olympic priority lanes)
Is the Euro going to drag Britain down