Blogs occasionally seem to have a Europe vs. United States mentality. I've
seen it since the beginning of blogging. Why is that? Why is so much scorn
reserved for Americans from Europeans? Why is such contempt shown for Europeans?
I think I have the answer: Drastically different philosophies on life.
Europeans are focused on fairness. Americans are focused on
freedom. Europeans look at Americans as a bunch of uncultured
barbarians running amok in their country and worse, through the world spreading
their vulgar culture around. Americans see Europeans as a bunch of sissies whose
people meekly except regulations and massive taxation in an effort to make life
more "fair" for everyone. The American response would typically be "Hey,
life ain't fair!" to which the European might answer "But it should be!" And so
it goes from there.
But because so many Europeans like individual Americans (and vice versa) the
argument usually gets shifted to the "administrations" of the various countries.
The typical American is a nice guy right? It's not his fault that the United
States is full of gun toting, capital punishment supporting, SUV driving, CO2
producing zealots. What do you expect with Bush in charge? And "Old Europe" is a
mess not because of the typical Belgian or German or Frenchman, it's cynical and
corrupt politicians like Chirac or Schroeder that make it seem so crummy to us.
What both fail to realize that in a democracy, the people get what they want.
Sometimes it takes awhile but eventually their cultures will get a government
that represents them. Some people are aghast that the United States has capital
punishment. But an overwhelming majority of Americans supports capital
punishment. So we elect leaders who support it. Both Kerry and Bush support
capital punishment. They have to. They wouldn't get elected otherwise. But why
do Americans support capital punishment? Because we're a bunch of "Cowboys"? No.
It's because we believe in having a great deal of freedom in our lives but we
also believe that freedom comes with a price -- personal responsibility.
Great freedom requiring personal responsibility is one of the cornerstones of
American culture. And it is a relatively foreign concept to Europeans (not
personal responsibility but the relationship between the two). We pretty
much allow people to do what they want here. You can own a gun with few
exceptions. There are few regulations in being an entrepreneur. But at the
same time, there are few regulations to keep a company from simply bombing on
its own. People in the United States aren't taxed very much relatively
speaking. They're free to make decisions on how they want to spend the money
they earn. But on the other side of the coin, they also are free to make poor
choices and end up in the gutter.
I don't mean this as a criticism of Europe but Europeans have never had the
kinds of freedoms Americans have. Even today. It was, after all, a big reason
why so many Europeans came to the United States in the first place. The US
government is formed on the basis of the federal government essentially
providing a handful of essential services. It's actually the weakest central
government in the industrialized world in terms of its domestic power. But
Europeans have not demanded the kinds of freedoms Americans want. A European
might correctly point out that too much freedom leads to chaos and anarchy. And
that Europeans have chosen to pull back a bit from the brink that Americans seem
so readily to jump over in order to try to create a more just society.
Remember, the French revolution cry was not freedom or death as it was
in the United States. It was split amongst 3 principles: liberty, equality,
fraternity. Much of "old Europe" could be described in this way. The
government exists to help make things more fair -- more equal. It's not fair for
some people to be incredibly rich while others are incredibly poor. A European
would look at the gap between the richest Americans and the poorest Americans as
evidence that the American system isn't working. An American would look at the
same evidence and point out that it is working as designed. The only concern
Americans would have is if the rich got rich from cheating the system in some
way. Americans, generally, do not envy the rich because they believe they have a
shot at being one of them if they play their cards right. And even if they
don't, odds are they'll end up doing pretty well.
The descendants of Europe who live in the United States have a significantly
better standard of living than anywhere else in the world. And the American
system works so well that descendents from Africa have the highest standard of
living of any people with African heritage in the world -- despite having been
slaves only a bit over a century ago. But there's a catch (isn't there always?)
The poorest Americans live pretty darn poorly compared to people in similar
situations in Europe. If life were an obstacle course where 90% of the people
were able to compete it and 10% didn't, the 90% in the US are rewarded far more
than the 90% in Europe. But at the same time, the 10% who can't do it suffer
more in the US than they do in Europe. So which path do you take?
As an American, I've been instilled with its cultural values. So I prefer
freedom to fairness. I have sympathy for those who haven't been able to make the
cut in American society but I also don't want to see our freedoms further eroded
in order to prop them up. I don't like the way things are in "old Europe". My
views aren't shared by all Americans. But they are shared by most Americans. And
vice versa in Europe. And the result of democracy in action (or representative
government if you're anal retentive) is that the system is set up to reflect our
values -- just like the French and Germans and Belgians and so on have
governments that reflect theirs. And that's a good thing.