Pardon me, but if you are a true freethinker, why all the preoccupation with the opinions of your putative neighbors? Wouldn’t a true freethinker choose his home on the basis of beauty, or climate, or some personal criteria? I don’t get it. Are we looking for a colony of freethinking drones to line up with? Is it the relative popularity of freethinking the criterion, or the agreement of the freethinkers of the locale to the freethoughts of the prospective homebuyer?
>> And don’t forget the German campaing against scientology
Oldscratch, this has been discussed here and elsewhere. Scientologists have legally been persecuted in Germany as in other countries for breaking the law, not for their stupid beliefs. Serch this site and you’ll find several threads about this, one of them started by me.
I’ll go with the votes for San Francisco.
The big thing there is all the people from Mexico, Central America, Asia, and Pacific Islands. So many different traditions that everyone is in a minority, and no one can make you feel more of an outsider than they are.
You’re right Kyla but were getting there. For a lot of the Irish State’s history the church (catholic) had a very strong influence on politics. This has changed a lot in the last decade or so .
You guys are confusing ‘freethinkers’ with ‘liberal thinkers’. San Franscisco might be great if your ‘freethinking’ takes the form of smoking dope and being sexually open and a fan of baby seals, but if your ‘freethinking’ takes the form of wanting to carry a gun and be a member of the militia, then San Fran might not be the place to be.
If you truly believe in free expression, you’ll tolerate all of these subcategories, short of outright violent hatred.
You might want to come up here where I live, in Alberta, Canada. It’s a generally conservative province, with fiscal restraint and somewhat conservative values. But pot smoking is a misdemeanor (and generally ignored anyway), we sometimes elect socialists just for fun, and the government pretty much stays out of your way. We have no provincial sales tax, but a thriving cultural and artistic life. Here in Edmonton we have jazz festivals, street performer festivals, and all kinds of other cultural events. You fans of socialized medicine will find as much of it as you want here, but if you are opposed to it Alberta is about to set up private clinics as an alternative.
Guns are regulated as they are in other parts of Canada, yet Alberta has a pro-gun culture that makes it easy enough within the boundaries of the law to own a gun and practice with it. Lots of gun ranges, safety courses, liberal quantities of hunting licenses, etc.
All in all, Albertans seem to be a pretty tolerant bunch for all viewpoints.
dhanson. That’s where you are wrong. Sure SF itself isn’t a great place to have a gun. But, just 5 miles north we have Marin. Not only one of the highest incidences of gun ownership in the country but, one of the highest NRA membership per capita areas too.
SF is almost TOO into originality. Anyone who isn’t a noncomformnist sticks out. (double negative, I know…)
As a small city, I am fond of my hometown, Burlington, Vt. The political scene is very liberal (we have the only independant congressman in the country), let gays civilly unite (we have a very active gay/lesbian population), the art scene is good, music is decent for the size of the city, it’s a college town so we get lots of fun bands, we have a funky open-air market (think 3rd St. Promenade in Santa Monica, but without the palm trees), we’re 2.5 hours from Montreal, 4 from Boston, 7 from New York. Basically, Vermont is where old hippies from the West Coast started running to when it got all yuppified out there, and it’s where artists run to when they can’t deal with New York anymore. It’s a fun state.
What you are saying is partially valid. There’s no need for tolerance if everyone fits the same general description in terms of colour, race, religion and language. However, I think Oslo is possibly a poor example when you’re looking for a typcical northwestern European city. Cities like London, Amsterdam, Brussels and Berlin are true melting pots, and tolerance there is comparable to that in Oslo.
Also, you can find the most hideous examples of racism in the Dutch countryside. Particularly in the little villages, where the only black guy known to man is Mr. T. of A-Team fame.
It’s not all about the composition of the population. Contact with different cultures makes some more tolerant, and others less tolerant. True tolerance lies within the educational systems and collective morality of a country. In essence, it lies within the people.
It’s also extremely logical for the Netherlands to be a tolerant country: after we robbed our colonies empty, the exploited came to us for work and hapiness. Partially, we’re only making up for crimes comitted. Not that it’s a public guilt trip though: by now, it has become an inherent part of our peoples character. Well, the majority anyway.
Some of these places sound really cool (Cambridge, Burlington, SF, etc., hell even Europe). But why do they all have to be in cold climates? At least relative to where I currently live.
I don’t mind snow, but I’m not going to get up and shovel my driveway, go inside and take a shower, and then have to go back and shovel all over again.
I’ll put my vote with Berkeley - it’s got to be the epitome (or at least the stereotype) of liberal towns. Austin would be a pretty good second choice for those here in Texas…
… and just a word of caution for those who think that any “college town” would do for a “free-thinker” atmosphere: I need to tell you about my beloved school, Texas A&M University.
College Station is very much a college town, as the name may suggest. Together with its conjoined twin city Bryan, the population numbers around 100,000; 40,000-45,000 of those are students.
I love A&M. It’s the best school in the world, bar none, as far as I’m concerned. However, I would have to say that extreme conservatism and even some traditions may infringe on what some folks would like to consider natural freedoms.
I’d gauge that you would be twenty times more likely to encounter a right-wing/conservative student or social group as you would a leftist/liberal one. Just walk past the bulletin boards on campus and you get a pretty clear idea of the scope of it all.
And don’t get me started on Elijah…
Pete
Texas A&M Class of '97
Long time RGMWer and ardent AOLer
What exactly is the definition of “free-thinker”? Different people seem to be using it differently. Does it mean tolerant of others? Politically liberal? (Please do not make me choke by pretending they are the same thing). Does it mean requiring tolerance from others for your own behavior, which some posters seem to imply? Does it mean an aversion to government regulation? To social conventions? These are all different things that may or may not go together, so what exactly does the phrase “free-thinker” cover?
I don’t want this to turn into a hijack, just a clarification. For that reason, this question is addressed to the OPer AerynSun. Please let him answer, and let’s use whatever definition he gives.
Yeah, it’s great to be a freethinker at Berkeley, as long as your free thinking doesn’t take the form of wanting to open a fur store, or teach that just because a guy and a girl get drunk and have sex it isn’t necessarily ‘date rape’, or drive a large, gas guzzling car, or try to open a men-only social club, or try to open a religious club on campus, or have pro-life beliefs, or write editorials against gun control or for capital punishment, or…
Berkeley has long had a reputation as being one of the most intolerant areas around for conservatives. The whole anti-political correctness movement got its start because of the excesses of the PC crowd on Berkeley campuses.