USA vs. Europe: Freedom vs. Fairness
A look at the philosophies behind two great cultures
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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.
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