Are Americans becoming more European?
The last benchmark for the Pew survey was 2002. Can you think of anything that’s happened since then to make Americans a little less confident? A costly war in Iraq initiated on false premises. A housing bubble and then a financial crash at home. The emergence of China as competitor and creditor.
Events of this past decade have taken some of the shine off “American exceptionalism.” The phrase has become utterly overloaded: the right uses it to justify its agenda, the left uses it to attack the right’s hubris, the right uses it to attack the left’s defeatism. And on and on.
What’s unfortunate is that there actually is something real, worthy and salvageable in the idea of American exceptionalism. But it has little to do with being dogmatically individualistic or having a much lower government-spending-to-GDP ratio than Europe has. It has to do with our openness to new people and ideas, and the diversity of cultures that immigrants carry in our country. For all its troubles, the U.S. remains the only country that Europeans, Asians, Africans, Latin Americans and Australians want to move to in great numbers. As they all become Americans, America becomes just a little more like all of them, creating hybrid attitudes and styles that shape the planet’s future.
Blowback
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Umm… I hope not. If I want to live in Europe, I’d move there.
Illinidiva on December 11, 2012 at 5:33 PM
Er, the Americans of European descent voted for Romney. We’re reminded by Chris Matthews and others that the GOP is a very, very European party and that is somehow a bad thing.
Punchenko on December 11, 2012 at 5:34 PM
The blue part is…
Oil Can on December 11, 2012 at 5:34 PM
More Soviet.
theCork on December 11, 2012 at 5:37 PM
Yes, we are.
terryannonline on December 11, 2012 at 5:39 PM
No.
We want the redistributive entitlement state but we don’t want to pay for it, so we’ll borrow to fund it instead. That’s the American way.
gwelf on December 11, 2012 at 5:40 PM
The problem is, for every European/Australian with judeo-christian background and like-minded view of liberty who move here, another 1000+ big government leeches from 3rd world cesspools with no democratic traditions move here too.
Norwegian on December 11, 2012 at 5:40 PM
America is becoming a nation of those that either work for the government or dependent on the government and the fewer and fewer of those that don’t or aren’t. The government sector grows and grows; taking more, paying itself more and doing less.
Total collapse is the only solution.
albill on December 11, 2012 at 5:48 PM
I stopped reading, right there.
OldEnglish on December 11, 2012 at 5:48 PM
The liberal bits of us are. Their ideological relationship with Europe, particularly its economic theories and practices, is neatly summed up in this analytical study:
http://www.theonion.com/articles/european-men-are-so-much-more-romantic-than-americ,11552/
JeremiahJohnson on December 11, 2012 at 6:01 PM
You paint with too broad a brush, unfortunately – and this attitude turns off a lot of Asian voters. For example, I used to work at a technology company which had a lot of Indian engineers – a country with very strong democratic traditions (if we think our democracy is messy, just hearing about how messy Indian democracy is with a billion people with vastly different subcultures gave me the jitters). So, a lot of the immigrants from the “3rd world” do bring strong democratic values with them. Not to mention significantly superior math skills.
peter_griffin on December 11, 2012 at 6:04 PM
India is a corrupt hell hole that is still dominated by a rigid caste system and backwardness. Why you would want to import backwardness and those with a fondness for a caste system is beyond me. I mean, I can understand why the Democrats would want to import such thinking.
http://reason.com/archives/2012/01/24/the-tragic-truth-about-indias-caste-syst
But they have democratic values! They do math!
Punchenko on December 11, 2012 at 6:14 PM
Actually a lot of the caste system battles are similar to our affirmative action battles being played out in the Supreme Court right now. A lot of Indians I have talked to complain bitterly about the spots they lost in their colleges because of affirmative action, and to an extent are sympathetic to people opposing affirmative action in US college admissions. I think you would want to make allies with people who share some of your values, if not all of them. Just treating everyone whom you don’t love with a broad brush gets them to vote against you enmasse. Think about it.
peter_griffin on December 11, 2012 at 6:20 PM
Corruption is a valid issue though – and both India and China are trying to grapple with it. As far as I have seen, the educated Indian immigrants who come to our shores are as ethical as we are, but they themselves would be quick to admit that institutional corruption is a problem that is hurting their growth curve substantially.
peter_griffin on December 11, 2012 at 6:23 PM
I thought about it and I have decided I want less Third World immigrants.
And Indians do benefit from Affirmative Action in hiring decisions and with the special government programs set aside for minorities like small business loans, etc.
Sure, they’re being denied choice spots in the Ivy League, but so aren’t most Americans of high ability:
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-myth-of-american-meritocracy/
And I would add that you can’t beat Santa Claus — especially a Santa Claus that scares non-white people and women with the conjured Evil White Man devil who is coming for your goodies and special race-based privileges.
Punchenko on December 11, 2012 at 6:37 PM
You nailed it with that last sentence.
The Democrats of today were the royalty of yesteryear: overpaid, overdressed, overbearing self-propelled sacks of flatulence that would ruled by fiat and an iron fist. God forbid that we ever see the return of either the caste or class system.
MelonCollie on December 11, 2012 at 7:19 PM