I am so tired of conservatives advising us not to emulate Europe. Yeah, maybe we do some things in a smarter way, but anyone who’s traveled to Europe has been impressed by countless ways in which the Europeans do things smarter and enjoy a higher quality of life. Whether it is the exceptional beauty, cleanliness, and relatively low crime crimes rates (especially of the violent variety) of their cities, or their efficient and comfortable transportation systems, or the substantially higher quality of cuisine and produce, or their less stressful workday and workyear, or their superior access to health care and education, any American traveling through Europe cannot help but be somewhat envious.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
Yeah, but Europeans are unAmerican.
“maybe we do some things in a smarter way”
Examples, please?
Bringing back monarchy.
Free-speech without ridiculous restrictions like they have on hate-speech.
I approve of Germany’s making holocaust denial a crime. I think there should be a few MORE limits on hate speech here. Words really can be weapons, and should be used with some care.
That said, I don’t want to go very far down that path. It’s more about making it illegal to yell fire in a crowded theater.
I don’t. It’s more effective for the bigots to be out in public, ridiculed and shunned from society, than being jailed for committing a “crime.” I can sympathize with Germany and maybe Austria, but ultimately I cannot support those laws.
I don’t really care about hate crimes; I don’t oppose hate crimes legislation because I don’t think it limits free speech like the stupid right-wing claims they do. However, most evidence shows that there really isn’t much of an impact on the offender, as it’s not the severity of the sentencing but the sentencing itself, but it’s kind of like putting a degree on murder. And a crime motivated by hate should be punished more severely.
However, when it comes to restrictions on speech like hate speech laws, I think it limits my speech and others’. I don’t want to go down that road. Moreover, I’ve come to realize that if I want my 4th and 8th amendments, I need to fight full-force for the rest of them. This is why despite me being a person who hates guns with a passion, that I’ve grown fairly conservative regarding gun laws; I think Feingold is a good model.
And last, I think our freedom of speech has brought the bigots to the fore much better than Europe has. It’s allowed us to integrate as a society, and move towards acceptance and tolerance freely, rather than forced tolerance that exists in Europe (especially England with their laws that, in my opinion, elevate Islam from criticism rather than protect it from bigotry). Affirmative action might also have had a hand, as well as Europe’s somewhat strict immigration laws (especially Germany), but I think free-speech has had too big of an impact to emulate Europe on this venue. Let’s stick with the economic model with welfare, health care, energy and trade, and the social model of maternity/paternity leave, same-sex rights, women’s access to fairer pay and government, etc.
that’s because conservatives are cavemen (and in the case of richard perle, who spends a substantial amount of time at his vacation home in France, hypocrites.
I foudn the countries i’ve visited in europe to be lovely: clean, safe, friendly. In fact, i find myself praying that my g/f finds work in England so we can move.
They’ve got that silly urge toward unity. Trying to learn how to share a continent (or a planet) without being dominant is just so alien to us.
They’ve had a couple millennia of futile wars to bring them to that point – we’re just past our second century of existence, most of it peaceful from our POV (never mind the wars of extermination against the native peoples of these parts)…
The US has certain disadvantages on that score. In order to protect its power, the US took on more of the military burden of the Cold War and encouraged the greater unification of Europe. The presence of US military bases and aid have contributed to the European economy at significant times.
But that very burden of power has made the US increasingly narrow-minded in its ideology. While Europe was still in rubble, the Truman administration was assaulted by the Soviet takeover of Eastern Europe on the one side and the Republican use of this as arguments against social democracy on the other. And the intermixture of the American labor union movement, social democrats, socialists, communists, and agents of the Soviet Union that occurred up through World War II without more than usual controversy became a matter of “treason”. And that was used to delegitimize every single part of the social democratic program from labor unions, to healthcare reform, to strongly egalitarian education, to desegregation.
Another disadvantage. Until the era of guest workers and immigration in Europe, it was pretty monocultural within each country. The culture wars could not be used to seize power and derail reform or the development of infrastructure.
At the end of World War II most European countries nationalized most of their infrastructure, including rail. In the US, rail remained in many private hands and because of its subsidy in the past was deliberately shut out of the subsidies afforded highways and air transportation, which were promoted as the transportation of the future.
Finally, the US has the same problem emulating Europe that Russia does. Only part of the country has population densities equivalent to those in Europe. But in the US the other part of the country votes in those representatives who are those telling us not to emulate Europe.
I always hear the “we broke away from Europe specifically to be different, not emulate them!”
Stupidest argument I’ve ever heard, of course. Then there’s the nationalism, and that just gets tiring. Of course, I loathe all forms of nationalism and patriotism altogether, sometimes going to extreme measures on the scale, so I cannot empathize with that at all.
I was just reading yesterday about this UK’s group proposal for a 21-hour work week. Oh yeah, we have a lot to learn from our European friends. We need to learn there’s more to life than gadgets and ever more expensive ways to entertain ourselves.
A 21-hour work week decreases unemployment. Now, to be effective, that must go along with a minimum wage bill that allows workers to make roughly the same salary as they did previously.
That’s what happened after the 40-hour work week and minimum wage were passed during the New Deal.
And less the Ebenezer Scrooges be worried about business profits, profits increase as a result of the increased demand.
Notwithstanding our emulation of Europe (circa middle ages) in recreating feudalism, complete with a ruling class and many, many serfs.
How much of the low crime rates in the cities is a function of pushing their (Muslim) brown people to the outskirts? US cities are donuts, European cities are I guess, pizzas (burnt crust edges etc.).
Are you making an assumption about the crime rate among Muslims?
Most of the European countries have low crime rates overall, regardless of location.
Conservatives are what the Europeans call “ugly Americans.” The ones who go through their European vacations nitpicking and cracking jokes about at anything they see that’s different from how Americans do it. Rather than try something different (who knows, they may like it) they just instinctively criticize. Why not just go to Cleveland or whatever for their vacation since they’re so afraid of anything different? And they ARE afraid, terrified, that the good old USA might not be the BEST at everything and that all of the propaganda they’ve gobbled up all their lives about American Exceptionalism may not be true after all. What jerks.
A friend of mine used to coordinate European trips for college-aged students from Colorado. She said it was really hard to convince the kids who had never been out of their own state (much less the country) that Paris was NOT just like Colorado Springs with the Eiffel Tower at the end of the street.
When I was visiting friends in Copenhagen, I was amazed that one of my friends thought nothing of walking home by herself, a trip of over a mile from where we were, at two in the morning. It’s not the distance that amazed me — it was the total lack of concern for her safety, a young woman walking alone at night in an urban area.
I was also really impressed with their descriptions of the social support network — even young just-out-of-university people who have NEVER held a job in their fields get paid unemployment (by the union, everyone is in a union, which negotiates salaries and benefits for all members in that field) that is sufficient to live on. Their health care is covered by the government (single-payer system), so no worries over any health care issues. And no student debts — the government pays for all education up through university, if you qualify.
They do pay for all this in taxes, but they get solid value for the money.