I’ve become aware of someone else besides Jeff Tayler who’s criticizing religion on Salon—a stand decidedly against the editorial current of that site. And the other anti-theist is Phil Torres, an author and ethicist described at Salon as:
. . . an Affiliate Scholar at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, and founder of the X-Risks Institute. He is the author of the forthcoming book The End: What Science and Religion Tell Us About the Apocalypse.
(His Wikipedia biography is here, and notes that he’s a musician as well.) Note that Torres’s book comes out February 16, and has an introduction by Uncle Russell Blackford (Eric MacDonald has long since lost his avuncular status, and is reduced to osculating the rump of Edward Feser on the latter’s website).
I see that Torres has written about a half dozen anti-religious or progressive posts on Salon, and he’s just added to them with a very good and information-packed piece, “We’re No. 16! Why Donald Trump’s boorish American exceptionalism is so wrong.”
The reason why Trump’s American exceptionalism is wrong is because, says Torres, America is not exceptional—at least not in the way we think. We’re not by a long shot the most socially healthy country in the word. In fact, as I point out incessantly, we’re the most socially dysfunctional First World country. One of the good things about Torres’s article is that it serves as a compendium, with references, of all the ways the U.S. falls short compared to our “peer countries”—mostly in Europe. We’re horrible, for example, when it comes to these issues:
- life expectancy
- government-supported health care
- gender parity
- quality of education
- happiness
- income equality
- ethics and lack of corruption
- lack of waste in government spending.
The list goes on, with documentation, so it’s a good reference. Summarizing the U.S.’s ranking, Torres says this:
The point is that, as should be clear by now, there’s an unequivocal pattern of American inferiority when our country’s performance is juxtaposed with the rest of the developed world’s. Indeed, in many categories — such as childhood poverty, income inequality and family paid leave — we’re just barely a developed country, if even that. The result of these failures is that our collective quality of life is not nearly as high as it ought to be. Here it’s worth turning to the Mercer Quality of Life Survey, since it attempts to quantify the livability of some 221 cities around the world. And guess what it finds? The U.S. has only a single city in the top 30 — and it happens to be the ultra-progressive den of liberal debauchery called San Francisco. At the pinnacle of Mercer’s list are cities like Vienna, Zurich, Auckland, Munich and Vancouver. In fact, of all the cities in the North American continent, the top four are all in Canada. Now that’s just embarrassing, eh?
Indeed. I’m going to Auckland! Now what’s the reason why we think we’re so good but we actually are pretty miserable compared to our “peer nations”? Torres singles out two reasons: religion and conservative politics:
Why exactly are we ranked low in terms of opportunity and flourishing? What’s behind our middling performance compared to the world? Is it because our country is too progressive? Too socialist? Too secular? Too crowded with atheists?
The unambiguous answer to these questions is a resounding No! For example, the U.S. turns out to be among the most religious countries in the developed world. According to a 2014 Gallup poll, “nearly four in 10 Americans report that they attended religious services in the past seven days.” In contrast, only about 2 percent of Norwegians attend church on a weekly basis, as of 2009. Along these very lines, a 2011 study reported that religion is tumbling toward “extinction” in nine developed countries, namely Australia, Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Switzerland — all of which are doing just fine. And whereas a U.S. politician could hardly dream of running for president as an out-of-the-closet atheist, many other countries have had atheist leaders in the past. As the former Prime Minister of Australia — a progressive woman who doesn’t believe in God — said to the Washington Post, “I think it would be inconceivable for me if I were an American to have turned up at the highest echelon of American politics being an atheist, single and childless.” Yet the empirical fact is that secular people are “markedly less nationalistic, less prejudiced, less anti-Semitic, less racist, less dogmatic, less ethnocentric, less close-minded, and less authoritarian” than religious folks. So it’s not that our country is too Godless.
Most of this I knew, but Torres take on American “progressivism” is pretty new to me:
The U.S. also turns out to be quite conservative by comparative standards. I find it hard to even map right-left American politics onto the political spectrum of European countries. On many issues, for example, the right-wing Tories in the UK are left of the Democrats. And Sweden, whose “thriving economy and society [are] based on a government of socialist principles, higher taxes, and healthy regulations,” has a tax rate that’s nearly double America’s. As an article in Forbes notes, the common thread that weaves together the tapestry of happiest countries is that “they are all borderline socialist states, with generous welfare benefits and lots of redistribution of wealth.” In these countries, civil liberties are taken seriously (some even permit prostitution and drug use), and everyone has a robust safety net to fall back on in tough times. So it’s also not that our country is too progressive.
And indeed, I’ve seen David Cameron take positions that American Democrats would consider too left wing. Not that I favor the Tories, but I’m not a big fan of Democrats (except for Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren) as genuine progressives. They’re too beholden to the banks, the industries, and the gun and health lobbies.
Torres’s conclusion?
I would argue that our country lags behind the developed world precisely because of how religious and conservative we are. As Bertrand Russell correctly observed way back in 1927, “I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.” As a matter of fact, religious conservatives in America have consistently opposed attempts to implement equal pay for women legislation, universal health care and stricter environmental regulations. For reasons that continue to baffle me, many middle-class people still vote for Republicans, even though the effect of Republican policies has been to knock us out of the top bracket with respect to nearly every metric of life-quality.
In the past I’ve argued that America is religious precisely because it’s socially dysfunctional, but Torres reverses the causal arrow: America’s hyper-religiosity makes us bad off. Yes, many religious people oppose social progress, and there’s no reason why there can’t be an insalubrious synergy between religion and social well-being. That is, perhaps religion makes society poorer off according to Torres’s indicators. (I’ll need to ponder that one, but it’s almost certainly true in many Muslim countries.) And when society gets poorer off, it becomes more religious (there’s ample sociological documentation for that). If Torres is right and an important causal direction is from religiosity to social dysfunction, then we need to figure out why America is so much more religious than other First World countries.
As for conservative politics holding back social progress, I’m prepared to believe it. Conservatives consistently oppose measures to equalize income, as well as to equalize rights: the rights of gays, blacks, immigrant, the impoverished, and women. They consistently oppose government intervention to level a playing field tilted by the vagaries of genes and environments.
Torres’s article does the best thing a piece like this can: it gives us food for thought. If you think that American religiosity itself has promoted a dysfunctional society (or if you take the other side), weigh in below. And if you agree, then let us know your hypothesis for why the U.S. is so much more religious than other First World nations.
The US is a country of contrasts: the best in some things but amongst the worst in others. Social issues are often amongst the worst, not surprising for a country where “socialism” is considered evil.
‘the best in some things. . . ‘
Such as?
The vertebrate fossil record of the continental US is second to none. But apart from that…
I too have to ask for examples of “best in some things”. Especially after reading this contemporaneous article:
http://www.salon.com/2016/01/30/were_no_16_why_donald_trumps_boorish_american_exceptionalism_is_so_wrong/
We mostly owe our current status to historical contingencies, especially with respect to WWII. Not to mention the shameful manner in which we acquired most of the land that forms the USA.
Hey! We’re at least one of the top three countries on the whole continent!
A fine article and I’d generally agree with all of it. I’m lucky enough to live in Europe but I’m still reluctant to damn the U.S. I’ve visited many times (my brother has made himself a nice life there) and each time I’ve met many wonderful people who do their country proud. However, there’s one thing I wish that Americans would do more of, and that’s travel. It really does broaden the mind. I’ve learned so much from visiting other countries and the experiences I’ve gained often inform my behaviour back home. There’s simply no substitute for first hand experience. So dust off those passports and get yer feet wet……
The majority of Americans would have to get a passport first.
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Or realize that there’s a rest of the world out there…
I don’t think it’s the lack of traveling. It is much more the lack of (and resistance to) learning.
In short, if you think you are the best then there is no possibility of improvement.
I believe that you have hit the proverbial nail on the head. Americans have been told, almost from the inception of the country that they live in the best nation ever to exist. The “City on a Hill”. The “New Jerusalem”. Who tells them this? The American myth is trotted out ad nauseum. Politicians reinforce the idea at every opportunity. It’s cemented by the wealthy, the entertainment industry (including the news programs)the PNAC et al and idiotic celebrities. There is no shortage of flags or Bibles in America
As the levels of education decline and the ability to use logic and rationality disappear the claims of patriotism increase. It’s almost as if Americans compensate by waving the flag higher and shouting louder. Having a little war once in a while is also useful.
Somebody suggested that Americans travel more outside the country. I would suggest that they be educated about the rest of the planet while in school.
Another person mentioned the fact that socialism is a bad word to most Americans. Why is that? More disinformation from the wealthy, the media, corporations and the politicians.
I admire so many things about America but prattling on about being the best,the lack of education and the uninformed opinion that democratic socialism is an evil are not among them. I wonder why so many working people vote against their own best interests. I wonder why so many working people think they should not benefit from the taxes they pay. They remind me of the workmen in The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. As one character repeats when a privilege of the upper classes is mentioned “That’s not for the likes of us.”. Americans think of themselves as independent,free thinking individualists. Many of them are in fact sheep,easily led by the propaganda of the wealthy,corporations and demagogues.
I hope I do not sound smug. America is our neighbour to the south. What happens there concerns us. You’re too big to ignore
Amen ;^)
I, on the contrary, am very happy that socialism never became too attractive for Americans. At the end of WWII, they saved Western Europe from it. Unfortunately for my country, it had too Eastern location to benefit from the Normandy landing. It was included in the Soviet bloc and ruined by socialism.
Eastern Europe was not ruined by socialism. It was ruined by tin-horn dictators with military force.
Right. The Soviet Union had nothing to do with it.
There’s a gulf between the authoritarian socialism of the Eastern Bloc and the liberal socialism of Western Europe.
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Indeed. The problem isn’t Left vs. Right but right wing authoritarianism vs social libertarianism.
And if it weren’t for the socialism I hee up in in Canada is be uneducated, impoverished and most likely already dead.
I’m so happy to know you survived the brutality of laissez-faire capitalism. Oh Ca-na-da, my home and native land…
I am always befuddled by people who think a dictatorship like the USSR had any relation to socialism
Bernie Sanders would agree.
The former Soviet Union and the Red Chinese bear the same relationship to socialism that the worst of the huckstering televangelists bear to the words of the Sermon on the Mount attributed to Jesus by the canonical gospels.
For many Americans I suspect the issue isn’t about whether they will benefit from their taxes, but whether someone else will — someone undeserving. It seems to me that a lot of people are willing to penalize themselves if by doing so they think they can punish a “cheater” even more. There are I think studies done with chimps which show this motivation cutting across species.
But on top of that, many people, mostly conservatives ime, have no idea who the cheaters really are. They think a black person raised in the projects by drug-addled parents, and who received no education, and now with children of their own, is cheating by collecting welfare. But CEOs who landed in that position due just about entirely to nepotism aren’t cheaters. They earned and deserve their privilege.
I think these peoples’ unwillingness to contribute to social welfare is at least as much a product of xenophobia as it is a product of thinking the recipients might be cheaters. They don’t want to help people who are different.
Yes that is the conservative mindset. The cheaters must be punished. They also seem to value self reliance and refuse to acknowledge the part luck (of birth, circumstance, race, gender, time) plays in getting you where you are.
I’d agree with you there. That type of mindset is often, of course, part of the religious mindset too, where sinners have to be punished. There’s also the religious idea that people are born into the situation they deserve, illness/injury is divine punishment, and people are poor because they don’t work hard enough.
Yes, my dad has a conservative friend who believes that if you can’t afford to go to university, you should work at McDonalds. He hated that I had government loans and grants.
Unbelievable – talk about wasting the country’s potential.
Regarding McDonalds, I hear the argument on Fox that their staff shouldn’t have higher wages because they’re entry-level or student jobs, not jobs people do who have to live off the money. The arrogance of the argument makes me boil every time I hear it
Yes, it’s shocking how people think that simply having money makes you superior in every way and that those who don’t have it are inferior in every way.
Funny thing is, my dad’s friend’s daughter had everything given to her. A car, an apartment to live in while going to school, new clothes and job interviews and of course her parents also paid her tuition.
I had none of that and worked every summer. Now she makes minimum wage and still her parents support her (she’s in her 40s). She did nothing with her education because she wasn’t interested. It would have been better if she hadn’t wasted her time at school and did whatever she wanted on her own, making her own money. But, her parents felt she had to compete with me.
Classic wasted potential.
So with his prejudices, he ended up ruining his daughter’s life too. I wonder if he ever worked out his place in the events that unfolded?
Nope!
Why am I not surprised?
I think this is very true. There is a deep paranoia about aiding freeloaders. And not to put too fine a point on it, when people in the US are thinking about the undeserving, about freeloaders benefiting from taxes, they are often imagining blacks or hispanics. It’s racism, to be sure, but also the more subtle psychology of identification… people like me vs people not like me. I would hazard to guess that social programs are easier to pass in countries that are more racially and culturally homogeneous, and harder to pass in countries that are less racially and culturally homogeneous.
It is clear that a lot of US politics is explained by this fact.
I agree with you expect at the end. New Zealand is much more racially diverse than the US and has much better social programmes.
In fact, the racial diversity of the US is another myth – there is an international measure of racial diversity, and the US isn’t among the most diverse nations.
You may be right, I was just guessing after all.
However, what matters is how the US compares to nations with strong social programs, not to all nations. With the strong (!) exception of Canada, at least this chart seems to suggest more diversity in the US than most of the western social democracies:
Map of Ethnic Diversity
Of course, there are many devils in the details. How different are the ethnic groups (Jews might be considered a different ethnic group from non-Jews, but in practice many people do not notice the difference), what is their history (e.g. refugees, immigration over time, slavery), what are their relative economic statuses, etc. Also, how does the diversity of a country with two large very distinct ethnic groups compare with a country with one really large and seven small and not easily identified ethnic groups? This seems tricky to measure, so I think I’d take the graph above, and any ranking, with a lot of caution.
In any case, whether there is a general pattern or not it seems to me that racial tensions are a big part of the barrier to social programs in the U.S. The fear that you are enabling some large “other” that may overwhelm you is, consciously or not consciously, behind a lot of people’s willingness to punish themselves (in the short term) in order to avoid helping the “undeserving”.
I completely agree about the “other” phenomenon. And while laudind NZ, I have to admit there are plenty of people here who have negative stereotypes about some demographics such as “lazy” or “think the country owes them a living”. The government, no matter which of the major parties is in power, is generally fair (though some are fairer than others) but people, of course, are often not that sophisticated in their understanding of policy.
Absolutely agree!! If you look at all the developed countries which one of them would put up with a political party like the Republicans? What would the Scandinavian countries do with trump, Cruz, Rubio et al? Banish them to the margins of society!!
I do not think that Angela Merkel, Silvio Berlusconi, Francois Holland or Margot Wallström are better than Trump, Cruz, Rubio et al. If the choice is between Trump and Merkel, I’d vote Trump without hesitation.
Why? Do you actually know much about Trump? He doesn’t really know anything. He is not a successful businessman. He is a rich kid who was born into money and has simply coasted along the privilege highway, taking advantage of all manner of loopholes and bailouts. The only thing he’s good at is having a ridiculously high opinion of himself.
A towering opinion of himself, you might say.
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The Democrats are not going to admit that Obama’s foreign policy brought the world to free fall. And they don’t give a damn about the world. They are isolationists. I am not. I often vote based on foreign-policy, not domestic-policy considerations. Therefore, if I were a US voter, at the coming elections, I would not bother to check anything about the Republican candidate. I’d vote for him anyway. All I’d need would be a reliable way to distinguish the Republican ballot from the rest. The candidate’s personality matters little. Obama looks a nice man to drink one’s tea with… and how does this benefit the Ukrainians or the Syrians? I’d vote Republican, before the bell rings for me.
1. You need to be specific about what “free fall” means and why it is Obama’s fault before we can even argue about that assertion. Further, this assertion has nothing to do with Trump and why he is or isn’t an attractive candidate.
2. What do you mean by “isolationists”? Assuming you mean self-centered, it is the right-wing that has that market cornered. Republicans are the ones that refuse to recognize that a rising tide lifts all boats and whose social policy boils down to “I’ve got mine; screw you”.
And, although like Diane I appreciate the non-troll earnestness of your comments, I really can’t take you seriously as a skeptic if you’d really vote for a candidate you didn’t research at all. That’s just stupidity, I’m sorry. As a liberal, yes, I’m likely to vote for the Democratic nominee, but I certainly wouldn’t vote for anyone I hadn’t researched. There may be something about either the Rep or Dem nominee that changes my mind.
Let me quote from my 2008 blog post, immediately after Obama’s election:
“As far as I can grasp something rational in the “hope” and “change” abracadabra (most of which, however, clearly works well below the brain cortex), Americans want to renounce their role in the world. They are tired of being good, intrepid, strong and devoted. They are tired of bringing light to the world and receiving mostly hate in return. They want brilliant isolation, keeping all their money at home to pay their own mortgages and letting dictators and terrorists do whatever they wish. I don’t know whether this would be good for the USA. It surely wouldn’t be good for the world. But if this is what the Americans want, who am I to judge them?”
Well, Putin is now doing whatever he wishes, Assad is doing whatever he wishes, and ISIS is doing whatever it wishes. This is what I mean by “world in free fall”. Obama not only allowed it, he showed sympathy to the villains.
By isolationism, I mean resignation of the USA from its role of world policeman and deliberate ending of Pax Americana. While I mentioned the financial help, I find the military, and the readiness to use it, far more important. Serious problems usually cannot be solved with money alone.
You seem to consider an option of non-voting. I do not.
Also, you seem to be unable to fully put yourself in my shoes – that is, of an European very close to the Syrian conflict. My government shut the border early on. The logic is clear: if a solution good for everybody is impossible, save yourself (as captains allegedly cried on sinking ships). I approve it. But I cannot explain how badly I feel. Like the characters in horror movies that lock doors and windows to keep the monsters out and then watch the monsters eating their team members who have remained out. If I could vote for the one position on Earth that has impact in these affairs, there is no way I’d vote for the party whose policy caused this, and which still fails to admit its mistake. And there is no way I’d abstain from voting.
It is another problem (and quite serious) that, in a First World country populated by hundreds of millions, both major parties have the habit of offering presidential candidates whom I wouldn’t employ if I had a grocery store. I think this is a phenomenon that needs research and can be the subject of a lot of PhD theses.
Where do I write that I’d consider not voting? I would not consider that an option. I would try to decide, based on researching the candidates, who the best one is, regardless of their official affiliation. You missed the point of that paragraph. The point is that you have to inform yourself about the candidates before voting.
I don’t see it that way, Maya. Rather we’ve learned that we can’t solve all the world’s problems just with military might, and that many situations are so complicated you can’t even tell the bad guys from the good guys. Personally, I’m very tired of having our young men & women killed in distant conflicts. (And horrified by the toll our military takes on the natives at any given battle site.)
Also, Obama just inherited the inane machinations of Dubya’s foreign policy. Remember that it’s (some of) the Republicans who think we should fight preemptive (!) wars, bring about regime change wherever we think it necessary, and/or that we need to provoke Armageddon.
“We can’t solve all the world’s problems just with military might.”
True, but military might solves more problems than humanitarian aid, education and health care combined.
“Personally, I’m very tired of having our young men & women killed in distant conflicts.”
I know this is a widespread attitudes among Americans. I cannot blame them. I’d suggest more relying on drones, and forming some analog of the French Foreign Legion. Putin uses Chechen and Dagestan mercenaries in Ukraine. Also, the USA should never again promise to defend others without a real commitment to do so. I can cite 3 examples: the Hungarians (1956), the Iraqis (1991) and the Ukrainians (1994). They were all betrayed.
“And horrified by the toll our military takes on the natives at any given battle site.”
You need not be horrified. You see that the toll on Rwandans, Chechens and Syrians was higher than in any conflict in which the USA took part. The impression of terrible civilian victims caused by US interventions is an artifact resulting from biased media reporting. They know that Western audience wants to hear that America is bad, American foreign policy is worse than Hitler’s, and American military is more devastating than the hordes of Genghis Khan. The demand to hear this is particularly high among the US public, a sort of masochism. When the USA was bombing Iraq, we were bombarded with images and stories of civilian victims. Now, as Russia is bombing Syria with non-precise “dumb” bombs, nobody gives a damn about civilian casualties. Everyone is full of understanding that war is about killing people.
« I’d suggest more relying on drones »
Or this?
Only partly facetious. Even if we risk only robots, who is the arbiter on intervention in a state’s internal affairs? Can the U.S. (or whoever) do so to protect its interests abroad (“the oil must flow”)? Or for humanitarian reasons?
I’m sure the U.S. thought it had good reason to break its promises. A devastating conflict with the USSR or Russia might cause more damage to more countries than the individual ones you mentioned.
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Proxy wars are never good and I think the world is lucky that Obama was in office during the Ukraine and Crimea situations.
Drone strikes are also far from surgical. Going to war means accepting loss of innocent life. You don’t do it lightheartedly.
The question about the arbiter is a bit too complex for me, but I find important that the USA has bet its self-interest on supporting civilization. Let me make a comparison: every subject on the market is motivated by striving for profit, but the behavior of a vaccine producer will differ from that of an arms producer because of the different uses of their products. Americans regularly complain of the NRA tactics. The same way, the USA defines its self-interest in the context of a decent, inhabitable world while e.g. for Russia it is in the context of being on top, that is, of being stronger and better than other countries, which (given the inevitable poor performance of Russia) can be achieved only by attacking and harming others.
I wonder, how could the USA think it had good reason to break its promises? I see very well that it could not afford a conflict with Russia in 1956. What I cannot see is what benefits did the USA see in encouraging the Hungarian revolutionaries with the false promise. The same with the Iraqi Shi’ites in 1991. The Bush administration had apparently decided already not to go to the end. No need to bait good people with false promises. Unless US government thought that the promise would inspire the freedom fighters so much that they would win a battle that the superpower USA would not risk to take herself.
Ukraine is another matter. I think Westerners are obsessed with fear of a nuclear war. I fear what they are ready to do just to avoid a nuclear conflict. I think that the USA deliberately deceived the Ukrainian survivors of the Holodomor into abandoning their only efficient defense, because for the USA, destruction of the Ukrainian-held nuclear weapons was more important than whether any Ukrainians would remain on Earth or not.
Thank you for the detailed responses. We are not yet on the same page, but I find the world from your point of view fascinating. And I will admit that it’s nice to hear that there are still people and countries that appreciate some of the US’s actions.
But I share Ant’s question about who should be the arbiter? We seem to be in a phase right now (I hope it’s a phase!) in which the Congress is essentially dysfunctional and Big Business and billionaires are calling the shots. These are not the sort of statespeople one expects to take a particularly humanistic approach to the just use of power.
(Personally, I’d been kinda hoping the European Union would become something of an equivalent Western power with similar sway internationally, but the EU would seem to be having growing pains.)
The Congress must have its word. I disapprove that Reagan supported the Contras against the Congress’ word (not because of the act itself).
The Congress, however, is not a body to take the initiative. Who is to take it? The President?
I don’t know well the US institutions, they are unusual to me because of the federal – state hierarchy and the lack of Prime Minister. Why is the Congress dysfunctional? (Not a rhetorical question, I just really don’t know.)
The arbitration must include some cost-benefit analysis. In WWII, Roosevelt’s administration correctly figured out that it had to intervene in Europe to save a part of it from communism. What I find very troubling is that they didn’t find it warranted to intervene to stop the Holocaust.
About EU, forget it. (As Nuland said, f**k EU – but she shouldn’t have said it in public.) It is not working. I wouldn’t stress so much on the role of the USA if there was any chance of EU to work.
Because an ultra-right wing of the Republican party has prevailed and they absolutely refuse to compromise on any issue. They’d rather (and have) shut down the government than accept any action that doesn’t match their dogma word for word.
You and a lot of us USians, too! What the majority of the country was told (by the mainstream media) was basically what the government wanted them to hear. But there were some USians who did know what was going on…I wonder how the war would have gone if there’d been an internet to alert everyone to what was the real story?
(Sadly, I guess it would have gone about the same. The information that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction was available but the US still invaded them preemptively. Man, are we ever getting a lot of mileage out of those not-weapons!)
Very disappointing about the EU!
It was Angela Merkel who hammered out a deal with Eastern nations about Ukraine. All in Russian. She is no Trump. She also has humility and, like most women, overthinks and over prepares. Trump narcissisticly believes he is so superior he doesn’t need to think or prepare let alone overthink and over prepare.
Re Trump: indeed. He recently cited a bible verse incorrectly and in his certainty that he could just talk his way out of it off the top of his head, he, obviously having not looked into the issue at all, dug the flub hole even deeper in his excuse. Of course I’m talking about “Two Corinthians” and the subsequent defense that Tod Starnes was the one who made the mistake by taking the shortcut of writing the numeral 2, rather than “second”.
I strongly disagree about Merkel.
She is pressing Ukraine to make concessions to Putin’s fifth column:
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-10-05/ukraine-has-no-choice-but-to-live-with-putin
Also, she signed the Nord Stream 2 project to buy more gas from Russia. Despite her talk, her policy is so much pro-Russian that a conspiracy theory is circulating in my country about Putin allegedly using her Stasi file to blackmail her.
She single-handedly brought the migration crisis out of control. When voters protested, they were water-cannoned. Now, she is trying to press other EU countries to take a part of the migrant burden, or they would be cut from EU funds. This is rush arrogant dictatorship. There are 2 possibilities: either the migration is a disaster, and then there is no reason to water-cannon protesters who say so, or it is a very nice thing, and then there is no reason to force it on other countries too stupid to realize what benefits them.
To me, Merkel is the worst thing happening to Europe since Milosevic.
As for Trump, he reminds me of the wannabe dictator in Stephen King’s Dead Zone (I’m too lazy to check the name). Life imitating literature. I’d like to see a more decent Republican becoming president. However, it seems that most people who dislike Trump would not vote for any Republican candidate.
I am referring to an earlier Ukraine crisis, not the current one. It was Merkel who had language documented that said Ukraine will one day join NATO. This seems small, but it was a huge accomplishment at the time.
You seem to object to her because she is one of the so-called Versteher but I think this gives her a needed perspective among Western leaders. Indeed, it is Merkel’s ability to ignore much of the narcissism and testosterone fuelled interactions of other leaders, that gives her her ability to get on with the job at hand.
Yes, she seemed to make a mistake with the refugees but she did so out of compassion, not out of ideology or hatred.
I agree re Merkel. She’s a far more skilled politician than Trump could ever aspire to be.
Many of those running for office in the US would be laughed off the stage in NZ, and while those who are extreme conservatives might make it as candidates in our most conservative political party, that party has never got enough votes to make it into parliament. They need 5% of the total vote, or just one electorate seat (and our boundaries aren’t gerrymandered) so it’s not a huge ask.
I am very suspicious to Merkel’s motivation concerning the refugees.
Shortly before inviting all unfortunates in the world to Germany, she had the guts to tell a tearful Palestinian girl that sorry, but Germany cannot take all people who wish to live in it.
My friend, who has spent some time in Germany, thinks that it was logical for Germany to accept Turks while keeping the door tightly shut to Eastern Europeans. A white Christian immigrant will very soon be quite like the native Germans, and they don’t want this. They prefer to create a lower, semi-integrated caste to do menial jobs for peanuts.
If Merkel truly cared for the Syrians, she would seek some solution for the entire country – she didn’t. If she truly wanted to help refugees, she would select from the camps in Turkey and Lebanon those in most need. She would transport them to Germany in a civilized way, not encourage them to sail in dinghies and risk drowning. Instead, she preferred to take those who were coming to Germany on their own, though many of them were no refugees really. She wanted the young adults, the healthy, the energetic, the survivors.
Her mistake was that she underestimated their number, and didn’t figure out how many of them would invest their energy and resourcefulness in illicit activities.
If you dislike Putin, why on earth would you favor a Republican? It’s the Republicans that support Putin.
Indeed, it’s the authoritarianism they so admire.
George W. Bush didn’t behave well during the Russian invasion and land grab in Georgia.
However, Obama raised this to new heights. He refused to sell arms to Ukraine despite the moral obligation of the USA to Ukraine after the signing of the 1994 Budapest memorandum. (I hope that other countries will take their lesson and nobody will trust the USA as Ukraine did.)
Obama claimed credit for the Maidan revolution, a statement that enormously benefited Putin’s propaganda and that, to my opinion, has nothing to do with the truth.
Trump indeed praised Putin, which I didn’t like at all. Nevertheless, these are so far only words. And Trump seems not to feel bound by his words, to put it mildly. I only wonder why he said this. Is there a substantial number of US voters who like Putin?
As for liking authoritarian regimes, Obama set a bar difficult to jump over. He did not bother to honor the victims of the Charlie Hebdo massacre, disparaged the Jewish victims as randomly chosen (he is a committed adversary of Israel and, it seems, of Jews anywhere). Then he went to the funeral of king Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, without using the opportunity to talk about Raif Badawi.
I would dispute that! IMO he’s trying (too hard some times) to find a way to speak to the Middle East with tact and an eye toward not exacerbating existing anti-Muslim (ahem! Trump, anyone?) sentiment in the States. I don’t think this is in any way meant to dismiss the plight of Israel and Jews in general, but instead an effort to carve a diplomatic approach that will not encourage anti-Muslim bigotry or worse.
(But then you’ve also got the US’s stomach-turning coziness with Saudi Arabia, for all the wrong reasons!)
Obama told Israel to “stop the occupation” and revealed some security secrets of Israel. If he is trying to do something about the Middle East, he must be delusional. The Jews hate him and the Muslims, I guess, despise him as Stalin despised Roosevelt and as the Cologne attackers despise the Germans.
I think it’s possible to disagree with the Israeli right without being anti-Israel. Plenty of Jews do.
Well, the middle east has been a minefield for nearly every administration I can remember. Obama may have tried another approach, but not succeeding is nothing new when talking about that region.
Donald Trump is a public-policy ignoramus with no discernible political philosophy, a megalomaniac who entered the presidential race solely to stroke his own ego. There is no truth in him; for him, there aren’t even any “facts” as such, merely a stream of events to be spun, either to rain insult upon his enemies or to flatter those whom he sees as situational allies. His tool to achieve his ends is rampant demagoguery aimed at the basest instincts of the worst of the American populace.
If you followed American politics closely and took a close, clear-eyed look at Trump, I would hope that the shock of recognition would repel you completely, such that you could never again bring yourself to say you might cast a vote in his favor.
Well said.
I have never heard a sermon that was more than a series of disconnected paragraph fragments and assertions culled from random spots in the Bible. I always wonder the extent to which this style of disjointed religious thought helps pave the way for evidence-free, faith-based thinking when it comes to public policy. Conservative politicians are free to just make a series of sermon-like assertions that simply feel right and, as with a real sermon, no one in their audience things them through. And more broadly, conservatives, who are certainly more religious than liberals, can comfortably ignore the overwhelming evidence that humans are changing the climate, and they can comfortably assert that lowering taxes on the super=rich somehow increases demand for goods and services so that the whole economy benefits.
An aside re the “Apocalypse”:
LaVoy Finicum (and the Bundys, as well as, other members of the gang that took over the Malheur Mational Wildlife Refuge), are believers in a more radical brand of Mormonism. Many of them live in and around Colorado City, AZ (an area with little federal, state or county oversight, as it’s too difficult to get to). The less radical, and more radical, Mormons both believe that families should store a year’s worth of food in preparation for the Apocalypse (the “End Times”) because “the biblically foretold end times are coming, and the righteous must be prepared to survive for a time without help.” They seem to believe they were given possession of this land by God and have God-given rights that are superimposed over (and more important than) all other rights.
(Does this sound like anyone you’ve heard in the Republican debates recently?)
There’s a great deal of literature available about these kinds of people and their fellow believers. It’s enough to make one think that they may be willing to do almost anything to bring on “Armageddon” which they believe will benefit them, the few, but not most of the rest of us. It’s enough to make you shake in your boots!
Oh, lordy. Those Mormons and their food storage fetish. Yes, the idea that an individual can be completely, I mean totally, self-sufficient is a prevelant fallacy in even mainstream Mormonism. I know a number of crazy Mormons who insist they are totally self-sufficient because they bought some land, some livestock, some farming equipment, and a whole slew of electricity-generating gadgets. They never seem to think about how they came to be in possession of those things, or the fact that armies of other people developed and made all that hardware. And of course they drive on roads, go to the hospital, rely on the fire department, and support #bluelivesmatter. But they are totally off-grid. Yeah. That’s the ticket.
sub
Completely agree. We live in the United Bubble of America. That’s what 30+ years of Reagan-based policies will get you. The fact that no Republican can see the obvious horrors the Reagan ideologue has wrought adds insult to injury.
ideologue = ideology
As an Eastern European, I have utmost respect for Reagan.
I agree: American religiosity itself has promoted a dysfunctional society. Or, as the Hitch put it: Organized religion poisons everything. Faith and dogmatism never work. Or, as Bertrand Russel put it:
“It is not by prayer and humility that you cause things to go as you wish, but by acquiring a knowledge of natural laws. The power you acquire in this way is much greater and more reliable than that formerly supposed to be acquired by prayer, because you never could tell whether your prayers would be favorably heard in Heaven. The power of prayer, moreover, had recognized limits; it would have been impious to ask too much. But the power of science has no known limits. We were told that faith could remove mountains, but no one believed it; we are now told that the atomic bomb can remove mountains, and everyone believes it.”
I’am reminded of something Peter Singer said in 2003:
“What Americans overrate most is — America”
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/27/arts/27INTR.html
Why the country with the best universities in the world falls short in so many other domains is a complex question. Causal questions are always hard, especially when you can’t run experiments.
Social democratic America – can it happen? Maybe, according to American sociologist Lane Kenworthy:”the US has been progressing slowly but steadily toward a genuine social democracy for nearly a century … the good society doesn’t require a radical break from our past; we just need to continue in the direction we are already heading”
Lane Kenworthy: Social democractic America. Oxford UP, 2015
http://lanekenworthy.net/
The issue of American Exceptionalism is quite complex and has been greatly debated by scholars. So, what follows is a brief summary of my view. The concept had some degree of validity up to about the early 1970s. America was a land that offered three things most other countries could not: democracy, economic opportunity, and religious freedom. This is why so many millions, from Europe in particular, flocked to this nation. My grandfather emigrated by himself from Russia in the early 20th century. Of course, the streets were not paved with gold as some may have been led to believe, but, by and large, the mythology had some basis in fact.
Over the last four decades, the mythology has crumbled and now totally collapsed. The potential for poor people to rise economically has largely disappeared, democracy is dubious since the grip of the plutocrats is getting stronger, and religious freedom now means the desired hegemony of the Christian theocrats. Trump has tried to square the current situation with the mythology of American. Notice that his slogan is “Make America Great Again.” He seems to be saying that American Exceptionalism, which existed at one time (such as the 1950s) no longer exists, but he’ll restore it and Obama is to blame for the country’s troubles. In reality, the county’s problems started way before Obama and, of late, there has been a spirited debate among economists as to whether the great rise in wealth of the middle class that took place between the end of World War II and approximately 1970 is likely to be repeated, though taming the 1% cannot hurt. But, simplicity, not nuance, is how politicians work. A demagogue like Trump is the master of the simple message. The distressed white working class is particularly receptive to simple solutions to highly complex problems.
As a Canadian who gee up in the 70s and 80s I just done by that America was better than Canada or New Zealand or Australia or Britain or most Western European countries like France and Germany. I was always perplex when they called themselves “the most free country in the world”. I thought it rude and braggy; had they seen other countries?
America is no shit hole. I’ve lived next to it all my life and, like many Canadians, have family there and watch lots of American TV. Indeed, I find it incredibly hyperbolic when people equate America with Russia in a tu quoque way. Canada wouldn’t exist if we lived next to Russia. Having said that, who doesn’t want to slap a politician who wants to “keep Canadians on their side of the border”? Um, we are happy here really and we have a very high standard of living. We’d just like to pop over for some shopping on Black Friday and maybe go south for the winter. This is the idea of exceptionalism. There are educated Americans that really believe the rest of the world is undeveloped and impoverished while they are the beacon of light. Exceptionalism has become exceptional parochialism. Where can you go from there when your baseline is so skewed?
Good article very cogent
America is exceptional. Objectively, it is the only civilizing force in the present-day world. All other super-powers (i.e. Russia, China and the Muslim world) are anti-civilizatonal. Their policies increase the misery and oppression in the world, and this is intentional.
Subjectively, to me, America is more inclusive than any other country. In the 90s, when a relation of mine wanted to emigrate, no Western European country wanted him. Canada would accept him if he had money, but he hadn’t. If he had money, he could rebuild his life in his homeland and wouldn’t need to emigrate. Only the USA accepted him. This was ill-fated in the end, but I still appreciate that he was given a chance.
Let me disclaim that I am not judging the countries that avoided my people like the plague. Every country is entitled to its immigration policy and is in no way obliged to let in people who want a better life. Nevertheless, when some German or Italian claims that his country is open to hard-working immigrants wanting a better life, I smile bitterly. I know this “openness” too well.
“America is exceptional. Objectively, it is the only civilizing force in the present-day world. ”
(Snort). American can barely civilize itself. America pursues its self interest, although it issues propaganda that it only works to benefit others.
Russia, China, etc, are certainly NOT anti-civilizational, although they may wish to structure civilization in ways we don’t wish.
Where do you live? Your comment contradicts all facts known to me. I live in Bulgaria. America and Canada saved my corner of the world from the wars of Milosevic who was supported by Russia. If this was their self-interest, kudos to this self-interest. Europe apparently had a self-interest to have wars and genocides in its backyard.
Now, people fleeing Putin’s dictatorship and aggression are coming to my country. Aside from the Syrians who also owe their current plight largely to Russia.
“Where do you live? ”
I live in the US. We support dictators around the world when their policies align with our interests, no matter how much the people suffer.
I seem to recall it was a NATO operation in your part of the world.
Yes, it was. But USA did most of the job, and next came Canada. Well, there were different considerations. It is good if distant countries do such dirty work, because if it is done by neighbors, it can poison the relationship for a long time. The French had some captured pilots that seemed to have been used as hostages. Etc. etc., lots of excuses. But there was also the European attitude “Stay aside, it’s our war” for years, there was reluctance to attack lest peacekeepers are hurt, and there was the shameful abandonment of the Srebrenica civilians by Dutch troops.
My opinion: without the USA, we’d have a war next door to this day. Like in Syria, where the USA decided not to intervene. European analysts of the 1990s predicted that the conflict would last for 50 years.
“We support dictators around the world when their policies align with our interests…”
Judgement in these matters is very difficult. Dictators are bad, but toppling them in a country that is culturally and institutionally unprepared for democracy can have dire results. See Iraq.
Countries will never be culturally and institutionally prepared for democracy while a dictatorship is in place. That’s a bit like defending slavery by saying that Africans aren’t prepared to manage their own lives. Very condescending.
This is a very serious objection, and one that I fully respect. However, it is a fact that when authoritarian / totalitarian rule falls, some countries successfully develop to democracy while others get a new tyranny or plunge into chaos. So I think that when a superpower is catalyzing a regime change or directly doing it by military intervention, a criterion is needed to know to which group of countries the target belongs.
After 1989-91, Central and Eastern Europe became democratic, except Yugoslavia and some ex-USSR countries. After the Arab Spring, MENA countries did not change to better, except Tunisia. However, there are two singled out for worst development: Iraq and Syria. It would be interesting to see what distinguishes Tunisia, but for our topic here, let’s just see whether we can see a factor unifying Yugoslavia, Iraq and Syria. All of them were (and Syria still is) countries formed of disparate elements, with a dictatorship based on a minority. To intervene into such a country is a heavy responsibility. Maybe – if we wish to find an excuse for Obama – this is one of the reasons for him not to do much in Syria.
You’re conflating two separate issues: 1) supporting a dictator who would otherwise fall, and 2) forcibly removing a dictator.
We were originally discussing #1, supporting a dictator who could not retain power without US aid. It’s difficult to justify this on moral grounds.
I don’t know examples of No. 1.
Actually, I remembered 1 example: Pinochet. This was bad. And the Mosaddegh overthrow.
Your idol Ronald Reagan also had dirty hands in this regard with his illegal material aid to the Contras — the brutal successors to Nicaragua’s corrupt Somoza dictatorship, whose iron-fisted four-decade rule had kept its citizens impoverished for the sake of its own enrichment at the hands of the United Fruit Company and other multi-national corporations.
Reagan similarly supported the neighboring rightwing military dictatorship in El Salvador, going so far as to shield it from liability when its death squads kidnapped four American nuns, raped them, murdered them, then left them to rot on the side of the road as a lesson to others — for the “crime” of ministering to poor campesinos in an area where there had been rumblings over land reform.
The official news in my country presented the Sandinistas and the left-wing Salvador guerillas as marxists who would nationalize property and would not allow dissent. The Sandinistas proved to be exactly this, though they were finally forced to allow free elections – maybe because of the Contras.
I think that a right-wing military dictotorship is to be preferred to a marxist dictatorship. The latter destroys the economy and turns the nation into a bunch of beggars.
Yes, the US gets some things right, like helping out regarding Milosevic. We also get a lot of things wrong, like invading Iraq. Does the former excuse the latter?
My opinion: yes, it does. You cannot do any job without mistakes.
I don’t mean to be offensive here, but that strikes me as a very dangerous way to view things – particularly international affairs. You seem to be of the opinion that because the US helped your country out at some point, the harms we have committed elsewhere are excused. This is self-serving, small-minded, authoritarian thinking, and is the kind of thinking that ends up justifying atrocities.
The USA helped Western Europe at the end of WWII; otherwise, Western Europeans would speak Russian, and it is a difficult language to learn :-). The USA helped South Korea. It also tried to help South Vietnam. It helped the Bosnians and the Kosovars. It helped the Libyans. It helps Israel. Now, it has decided not to help the Syrians seriously. The results are in front of our eyes. The US non-intervention in Syria resulted in a humanitarian crisis unseen since WWII, barrel bombs over civilians, babies washed ashore etc. These are the facts, they seem to support my opinion. You have the epithets.
At the end of WWII western countries signed away Poland to the Soviets. With help like that…
Where have I said that the US hasn’t done noteworthy things? Of course it has. I’m not saying the US sucks – I’m saying that it shouldn’t be viewed as a uniform source of good in the world, that its failures need to be listed alongside its successes.
“My opinion: yes, it does.”
“Objectively, it is the only civilizing force in the present-day world.”
You are, of course, welcome to express your opinion, but you are making a stronger claim here. Don’t be surprised when people who live in the U.S. challenge such. You have given no evidence of objectivity. It is not bad for U.S. progressives to hear that some foreigners appreciate some parts of U.S. foreign policy. But we are not going to replace our own considered opinions with yours just because you have personally benefited (or believe you have) from our nation’s actions. By all means, point out and praise specific acts you deem praiseworthy, but please refrain from making sweeping generalizations that are a matter of opinion and calling them “objective”.
By “objective”, I meant that this is related to humanity in general, rather than to my personal experience. I was expressing an opinion about impersonal, “objective” situations, but my opinion itself was subjective, and of course I cannot claim that it is infallible.
The oppressed of the world such as the Kosovars and the Libyans usually call to NATO, this seems more PC than to call directly to the USA, but we all know what would NATO without the USA be.
Of course, US citizens are fully entitled to vote as they consider best, even if this means the rest of the world going to hell. They are not obliged to throw their funds and lives to save people who often do not seriously try to save themselves are not even grateful when someone else saves them. And it will take time before a disaster resulting from US isolationist policy crosses the oceans to hit back America. What I wish is that Americans admit when they act in their self-interest. E.g. not to claim, as US leftists claim to this day, that letting South Vietnamese be engulfed by the totalitarian invading North was in their (the Vietnamese’s) own interest.
mayamarkov, I really appreciate your posts here and admire your ability to remain unemotional even when no one seems to agree with you. You provide a viewpoint that is foreign to us and worth hearing.
I think it’s ironic that apparently we’re all agreed that the ultimate problem is “American exceptionalism,” when in fact everyone here is talking American reprehensibility.
Thank you!
By “civilization”, I mean a society recognizing the right of every human being to life and freedom. Maybe you are using the term in its broader, anthropological sense.
I think the phrase used more often is “self determination”, but we don’t have a good record on that score. For instance, we don’t want to allow the citizens of Saudi Arabia self determination, because they would remove the current government and install one that hates the US.
I don’t think so. The masses of Saudi Arabia already have the theocratic Dark Ages that are so dear to their hearts, and the elite of the country surely appreciates the US military protection, even if it doesn’t admit it openly.
How is it the responsibility of the U.S. to grant self determination to the people of Saudi Arabis, but when the U.S. fights a war with the effect of granting self determination to the Itaqis, we are acting in our self interest? Which recent war has the U.S. been involved in that it grabbed the spoils and took that country’s natural resources as its own? The Iraqis will, in my opinion, put their religious leaders into power and gradually move toward theocracy as a result of getting the chance to be democratic and get out from under the control of that maniac SaddamHussein. Getting the people of Iraq self determination is in the interest of the Iraqis. Saudi Arabia, as bad as it is, is not committing the atrocities SaddamHussein was guilty of and is surely not disrupting the flow of oil. On what basis should the United States overthrow the Saudi government. It is a simplistic and conspiracy-minded view of the world to think that the U.S. should, the but is not granting self determination to people over whom it has no control because it cynically likes the status quo.
A couple of typos with my thumb: Iraqis not Itaquis, Saudi Arabia not Saudi Arabis, “the U.S. should, but is not…” instead of what I wrote. There seems to be no edit button on my IPhone version of the site.
To be precise, the 2003 Iraq war was not undertaken to liberate Iraq and was not declared to be such. It was presumed to be in the US interest and to have as a side-effect democratization of Iraq, and it was justified with the alleged existence of WMD.
I’ve read an analysis about the true causes of the war: (1) to remove S. Hussein as existential threat to the Kurds and so to release for other deployment the US troops guarding the Kurdish territory; (2) to result in a regime that would sell oil to the USA and so would relax is dependence on the terror sponsor and exporter Saudi Arabia. (Unfortunately, I cannot find this analysis; anyway, it was not official.)
It was a PR disaster when WMDs were not found in Iraq. I think that they should never have been used as casus belli without 100% reliable evidence. Even “we are going to war because we want to” would have been better.
As for the democratization of Iraq – to have democracy, you must first have a nation. Iraq was not only a dictatorship but a country where the power belonged to the minority (the Sunnis). When in such a country the majority acquires rights, it starts nation-building by expelling and butchering the others. To cap it all, the best part of the Iraqi people – the Kurds, are deprived of self-determination, mainly because the NATO ally Turkey wants so. What a mess…
This said, I wouldn’t blame anyone too much for Iraq. It is easy to be wise in hindsight.
No hindsight necessary. I, and many others recognized it as bogus at the time. The entire reason for the Iraq war was because W wanted Husein who had gone after his father.
“his father…”
Sounds like the plot of a profitable film screenplay.
Saddam Hussein going after W’s father? I thought it was the other way round :-). Unfortunately, Bush-senior didn’t finish the job. Maybe promised to, in exchange to release of hostages by Saddam – this is just my thought.
I recently browsed some copies of Time magazine from 1996-97, the Clinton era. They looked like a sitcom, starring Bill Clinton, Monica Lewinsky, Kenneth Starr and, yes, Saddam Hussein. Every 3 or 4 copies, there was a discussion about Saddam’s WMDs, the sanctions, and the art of dictator removal.
In 1993 there was an assassination attempt on Bush Sr. during a visit to Kuwait. It was not (obviously) successful.
“How is it the responsibility of the U.S. to grant self determination to the people of Saudi Arabis”
I didn’t say it was.
“In the past I’ve argued that America is religious precisely because it’s socially dysfunctional, but Torres reverses the causal arrow: America’s hyper-religiosity makes us bad off. ”
Surely there’s a feedback loop? Social dysfunction leads to religion which leads to more social dysfunction which leads to more religion…
I believe you are stating the same theme that I give down lower at #20. Religion among other bad results, such as lots of poor, lots of places for people to get lost in drugs in violence….a breakdown of society.
Attempting to make religion the reason just has no standing. Where else in the world could you go and find more kinds of religion and freedom to be any religion. Some think 1970 was some kind of magical change but not really. The free market capitalist system in this country is a big driver in this…not religion.
Go back to very early 1900s when Teddy Roosevelt was president. When recession and bad times hit, where did he go to fix it. To JP Morgan…one of the guys with all the money. Go back to 1960, What did Ike warn everyone about and was ignored. The Military Industrial Complex – where all the money goes today.
You would have a better chance of abolishing religion today than to mess with the Military Industrial Complex.
I would recommend “The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America” by Dr. Gerald Horne. The United States was founded as a Protestant Christian colony, and Christianity was used as a litmus test for social acceptance – Catholics were routinely barred from entry, because the Protestants believed the Catholics would choose religion as their ultimate loyalty and side with either Catholic France (to the north and west) or Catholic Spain (to the south – notably Florida, not one of the original 13 colonies, and to the east – Cuba). So this particular religion was the main form of identity (along with whiteness) from the earliest colonization, which wasn’t really very long ago, civilizationally speaking, in a way it never was in the older civilizations.
There is no question that religion, mostly of the Protestant variety, played a major role in American life, going as far back as Jamestown and the Pilgrims. But, we need to be clear that when the Constitution was written in 1787, the country was not established as a Christian nation, although its residents were overwhelmingly Christian. If the Founders intended the nation to be Christian, it would have established it as a state religion. For a variety of reasons, including the fact that the country was composed of a multitude of Protestant sects, each with its own peculiar set of beliefs, Article VI stated, “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” Some of the states, however, had religious test, enforced to varying degrees.
Because, owing to the First Amendment, religion in the US is privatised. In Europe, we tend to have state-run religions.
In the same way that a private company producing cars would tend to produce better and cheaper cars than a state company (Trabbant anyone?) owing to the fact of competition, so American religion tends to be more successful.
[Well, it’s a hypothesis, I’m not sure whether it is true.]
I agree that the reaction to the first amendment tends to allow many religions to fragment and find their own way to control members and make them xenophobic. I also think the arrow points both ways, causing a snowball effect of disfunction and religiosity in a feedback loop deeper religion causes more misery which causes the disenfranchised to look to religion for help.
But how does that explain the relative lack of religiosity in other former British colonies like Canada, Australia, New Zealand?
Could it be the act of revolution itself had something to do with it? The rest of us didn’t rebel. Maybe it took a certain mindset to rebel and this mindset was susceptible to the type of religiosity experienced in the US.
I sense that the U.S. was very unique. Susan Jacoby wrote about this in “Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism” and in other historical treatments.
There is a problem of scale, which stumps Torres at times. As I understand it US citizens are as geographical literate on their neighborhood as Europeans, it is just that US is a continent (near enough) on its own.
I thought US was so religious because so many extreme sects escaped harassment by moving there!?
And it is a former colonial place, which can’t be good. I saw research the other day claiming to find that there was indeed a great extinction of Americas natives as seen by the extinction of use of forests for fire and regrowth over their earlier sites. The timing was, at least for US, when missionaries started to school natives, likely leading to epidemics. Such events could have skewed the outlook and social power of local religious sects, especially the apocalyptic minded.
Just a thought-maybe in our early open immigration acceptance America became the repository of the most intensely religious groups, unacceptable in their original settings (Puritans, Anabaptists et.al.). These groups saw that their survival depended on vigorous growth via group reproduction and recruitment. On the other hand America’s clearly stated “freedom of religion” has allowed home grown religions (Mormons and various cults) to take root and flourish with the same methods as the imported groups except for those few that espoused sexual abstinence. These groups share the invention and prosper needs with the Muslims of the Middle East though the vigorous and violent methods of growth of Islam were only mirrored by Spanish Catholicism.
America is frequently chided by Europeans for our youthful naivité and in the case of religion we are our own victims of exactly that quality i.e. we need to grow up, learn to mentally take responsibility for our own behaviors and stop waiting for a god to tell us, via his interpreters (pastors, priests, witch doctors, cult leaders and such) and move forward as aware adults.
My problem with the list of cities is it doesn’t appear to take account of housing affordability. Average house prices (excluding condos):
Vancouver $1,000,000.
Calgary $460,000.
Montreal $525,000.
Ottawa $400,000.
Toronto $1,000,000.
Large segments of society can’t afford to buy a house at $1,000,000. If you have to spend a large portion of your income on your housing it may very well negatively effect other areas of your life and makes it quite a struggle.
This makes me question the veracity of a list that purports to measure quality of living.
Living near to San Francisco, and completely unable to afford a house here, that was the first thing that leapt to my mind: What good does it do for me that San Francisco is “livable”? I can’t live there. You probably can’t either.
Yes, we hardly need a study to tell us that rich people enjoy a better life than poor people.
Average house prices in Auckland are some of the most expensive in the world too, but much of the rest of the country has pretty reasonable prices.
My theory on why the US of A is an inglorious outlier on religosity among developed countries is perpetuated psychological child abuse.
The ‘socialism’ that is so ridiculed in the US of A is actually being capable of caring for others, to feel and act with empathy.
A number of authors maintain that psychological abuse during infancy adversely affects the capacity of acting with empathy in adulthood.
Homes with conservative, authoritarian parents pass on empathy-deficient members of society.
And here comes the religious outlier deal: ever since the Mayflower hit port, the trio of religion, conservatism, and authoritarianism has strongly entrenched itself in the American social fabric.
Other currently developed countries, mostly European, looked pretty much the same coming out of the Middle Age, entering the Enlightenment Age.
These countries then embraced new ideas, relaxed their authoritarian ways, and let social empathy flourish.
At that time, the US of A got isolated in all possible ways (geographically, culturally), and did not get to feel the winds of change, for a large portion of its population.
About half of the US population these days sadly remains deeply conservative, deeply authoritarian, and deeply religious.
And deeply abuses its children psychologically. Which keeps the cycle going.
No possible way out of it, in the foreseeable future.
I was finished commenting on this until I saw this comment. Are you saying that a country of 330 million people is systematically raising children lacking empathy? Do you truly believe the U.S. Is a country of people who were brought up by authoritarians and as a result the people lack empathy? A country full of selfish, uncaring people? You’re joking, right? What an insulting and asinine thing to write about such a large, diverse population. Americans can trace their heritage to every corner of the world and a large percentage came to the United States in the last hundred years. Significant numbers arrived in the last 20-30 years. Regardless of your opinion about society in the U.S., it is a civilized country where people by and large get along with each other. Do you normally impose hideous stereotypes on large populations? It seems kind of silly, don’t you think?
Well said, Larry.
Let me honestly share some thoughts, with the risk of angering US commenters.
I have a close friend who has lived and worked in the USA for more than a decade. I recently asked her why, to her opinion, shootings by psychopaths in the USA seem to be more than the fair share per capita – is the easy availability of firearms the only reason, or there may be more to it.
She said, “American culture includes much individualism and respect for privacy, and far less socialization than here in Europe. Children in school sit on separate desks, not two per desk. Adults haven’t our cafes and other places for socialization. They mainly socialize in churches; for them, God is an impersonation of the good they do to other people and other people do to them. Otherwise, they have little social contact outside the nuclear family. I fear that in some individuals, this disconnected way of life may facilitate psychopathy, while others have little opportunity not only to react but even to take notice of the change.”
Reading a Daily Mail article about Robert Dear (the Planned Parenthood shooter), I mentioned something that resonated:
“Friday’s shooting and Dear’s arrest have left locals in Hartsel, a town of just 677 people, shocked. Speaking to Daily Mail Online, residents said Dear had never caused any problems or mentioned anything about politics or abortion rights.
‘He was very quiet,’ said Jamie Heffelman, who co-owns the town’s only bar, the Highline Cafe and Saloon. ‘He never interacted with anyone. He would just come in here, eat and drink, and never caused any problems.
‘He would just order his food and kept himself to himself. He was very pleasant.’ She added: ‘He never spoke about politics or anything like that.
‘A lot of people come here to be left alone — you can live for years around here and no one will notice.’
Another local, Charlie Buher, added: ‘Nobody really knew him. The kind of guys who live up here, they like to be by themselves.'”
Individuality and isolation is a likely factor in much of the dysfunction in society. I’ve lived in a suburb in central New York state for 20 years and most of my neighbors are completely unknown to me. They are incredibly antisocial. I have had only very rare encounters with them over the years. If I saw any of them in a grocery store I probably would not recognize them. Fragmentation occurs in part because suburban life necessitates driving. Many streets have no sidewalks. You have to go into town to see a pedestrian to wave to and say hello. Most socializing occurs at work.
My parents used to talk of the much richer social tapestry they experienced as kids and young adults during the depression. Then neighbors depended on each other for some of the necessities of life and felt the need to keep in touch.
Also, people follow job opportunities and families become disconnected. Very few of my extended family reside in the same community. To some extent we are strangers in a strange land.
I don’t really care to know my neighbours. I know their dogs better than I know them. I’m not so much antisocial, as I am choosy about who I spend time with when I have very little energy to give.
I agree. I think people generally share the feeling. Immigrants in closely spaced ghetto housing, as they move up the economic scale, usually opt for more privacy in widely spaced suburban housing.
I agree too. I’d have to knock on a lot of doors to find someone as interesting as most of the commenters here. Physical proximity has little to do with intellectual/psychological affinity.
Before women commonly had careers or had to work to make ends meet neighborhoods were more, well, neighborly. The kids all played together & it was typical to go borrow an egg or whatever if you came up short while cooking. Nowadays neighborhoods tend to be largely empty during the daytimes, and evenings are rushed affairs of homework and nuked food. And week-ends involve organized sports for the kids and household chores there was no time for during the week.
Add to that the stay-insideness of electronic entertainment and you’ll find that a great many of what used to be reasons to interact with those physically close to you are now obsolete.
(For the most part, I prefer the “now” conditions.)
“I prefer the “now” conditions”
It might be just nostalgia that makes us think back to “the good old days”. Leave it to Beaver, the Ozzie and Harriet Show. Maybe it wasn’t so good really. On the internet you relate to people you have something in common with. In a neighborhood you’re stuck with…whatever.
Yes, that’s how I see it!
Even if we were to accept that Americans never socialize (which is not true but may be a false impression), psychopathy isn’ something you develop but something you are born with due to brain anatomy and chemistry. So, it is highly unlikely that there are more psychopaths in America due to lack of socialization.
And it is important to note. Psychopaths are everywhere. I’ve met many working in a corporation. They are dangerous, but few go so far as to murder.
I suppose that psychopathy has a relatively constant frequency across the entire human population. What I meant (I didn’t phrase my previous comment correctly) was that, in an “individualistic” culture, psychopaths may be more likely to go so far as to murder.
The frequency of these murder is underestimated by the public. Unless they are mass shootings or have terrorism overtones, they are likely to remain unsolved. When they are isolated, they are difficult to solve because the murderer has no apparent motivation. The police have their algorithm. They first check the victim’s criminal background. If nothing comes out, they try to extort a confession from the spouse. By the time they start to look into a broader circle, it is too late. The trace is cold. Even if they find the murderer and question him, he has got rid of the gun. He will say that his gun has been stolen at some unknown earlier moment. If he doesn’t break down, he is immune. They may be sure that it is him, but they cannot prove it in court. So they will not try to indict him at all. He get away with the murder and can do another one, if he feels like it.
I know such a murder. It left a young innocent person dead, a child with one parent only and several other people devastated for life. And it never made national news, just local.
I think you falsely attribute individualism to only America. All the former British colonies have this characteristic, including mine, Canada. It was either something we inherited from Britain or something we developed when we left.
Interesting point, and one I agree with, now that I think about it. Our nations are all so relatively new compared to Europe and Asia…our pioneer/new-frontier history is quite recent; we haven’t had centuries to coalesce the way the Old World has.
The only thing wrong with the Torres piece is that he is confusing the results with the cause. Conservative and Religious are results. The cause is what he misses.
America is a large area of 50 separate states with lots of regional differences. Maybe too much to be governed with a Republic form of government. Madison and others argued this problem at the Constitutional Convention in 1787. It had never been done before on such a large area and some were skeptical even then.
What we have in the U.S. today is exactly what some feared way back in 1787 in Philly. A country that is essentially run by the few. Those with the gold make the rules. The Democracy part no longer drives the train. Money is power and money is what runs congress. Who even runs for congress is more or less determined by the few, so the voting means much less than it would.
Of all the presidential candidates you see right now on both sides of the political game, there is no one who is operating as a person of the people except one and that is Bernie. And what chance does he have, almost none. Even if he somehow pulled off a big upset he will never get anything done with the congress.
A dysfunctional system of government drives the society to religion and other bad ideas, such as conservative thinking, which is the same as backward thinking. The article is simply telling us the obvious – the results.
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A delightful article. I hope there are many more sermons from Torres.
A partial explanation of American religiosity surely lies in the many colonies founded with a religious purpose (including Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia), and the multiple periods of Great Awakening religious revivals.
Norway actually has the lowest church attendance of ANY European country at 2%. But 22% believe there is a god.
Does that 22% include Ásatrú?
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Perhaps only Odin knows!
Oðinn. Or Þórr?
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Comparisons like this should be made on a state by state basis.
To average out the differences among different regions of the U.S. and then compare it as a whole to a country like the Netherlands misrepresents the problem.
Plus, it reinforces our overdeveloped tendency to look to the federal government to solve every single problem, as if state legislatures don’t exist. I am, of course, not denying the necessary and essential role that federal legislation has often played, e.g. civil rights. But places like Oregon and Mississippi should not be so easily lumped together.
It’s hardly surprising that Americans feel themselves exceptionlal, they are daily being fed this rhetoric, and in the main are so insulated from the Real World by their Corporate Media ,they hardly get a real picture of anything. What amazes me is the number of People that hang onto every word of the Con Men called Televangelists, sending them Money and hanging onto every lie that comes out of their mouths,below is an astounding example, to anyone who is marginally rational its obvious that these two are Con Men
“(Eric MacDonald has long since lost his avuncular status, and is reduced to osculating the rump of Edward Feser on the latter’s website).”
Is there no one in this comment section, other than me, who objects to this comment?
I don’t know; what is it you object to? Is it that you don’t think he’s kissing Feser’s arse?
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Sorry, but a. you don’t get to tell me what to say or think, and b. MacDonald has been dissing me all over the internet for several years (now on Feser’s site), and I have not responded. His reversion to osculating faith is both distressing and reprehensible, and I do not take back what I said.
If you don’t like what I said, just go comment elsewhere, please.
This forces me to go look at some of MacDonald’s recent writing. Indeed, it seems he’s just going on and on about his troubles with your take on philosophy and theology. It seems to me you’ve been extraordinarily clear. Not much room for ambiguity, but there it is – complaints that make no rational sense. In order to have a reasonable conversation about issues of morality, etc., you need to have a basic agreement that deities either do or don’t exist.
Fundamentally, the US (like other countries) have a lot of delusional twats who fear their lives are just that, a life and no more.
That fear is justified because that is pretty much what it is, ask any of the dead.
So the afterlife becomes a cognitive reward for the living.. I’m all churched and prayed up, now what is my reward?
Heaven it is.
Their conservatism is pinned to this, pay your dues and get a reward.
late to the party
As far as I can tell there’s a feedback loop with social dysfunction and religiousity involved. There can of course be other reasons for social dysfunction, which can lead into the feedback loop from elsewhere.
See “Atheism and Cognitive Science” by Jonathan A. Lanman in the Oxford Handbook of Atheism (2013) for insight into the explanations offered in this piece. Lanham is at the Centre for Anthropology and Mind at Oxford and has been doing a lot of research on why different societies are secular or atheist or religious. His work combines some aspects of evolutionary psychology and cognitive science to examine religious and atheist beliefs.
“We can’t solve all the world’s problems just with military might.”
True, but military might solves more problems than humanitarian aid, education and health care combined.
You need serious therapy as soon as possible.
And you need to find another website to comment on because you are banned for life. What kind of person would suggest that someone else needs “serious therapy” for making comments they don’t like? A nasty and rude person who doesn’t belong on this site. Read the Roolz, and then go to some other place where rudeness is encouraged.