January 8, 2003
AMERICAN [AND AUSTRALIAN] EXCEPTIONALISM: (via mike earl)
American values: Living with a superpower: Some values are held in common by America and its allies. As three studies show, many others are not (The Economist, Jan 2nd 2003)Consider the third recent report, the world values survey run by the University of Michigan.Unlike the other two polls, this survey goes back a long way. The university has been sending out hundreds of questions for the past 25 years (it now covers 78 countries with 85% of the world's population). Its distinctive feature is the way it organises the replies. It arranges them in two broad categories. The first it calls traditional values; the second, values of self-expression.
The survey defines "traditional values" as those of religion, family and country. Traditionalists say religion is important in their lives. They have a strong sense of national pride, think children should be taught to obey and that the first duty of a child is to make his or her parents proud. They say abortion, euthanasia, divorce and suicide are never justifiable. At the other end of this spectrum are "secular-rational" values: they emphasise the opposite qualities.
The other category looks at "quality of life" attributes. At one end of this spectrum are the values people hold when the struggle for survival is uppermost: they say that economic and physical security are more important than self-expression. People who cannot take food or safety for granted tend to dislike foreigners, homosexuals and people with AIDS. They are wary of any form of political activity, even signing a petition. And they think men make better political leaders than women. "Self-expression" values are the opposite.
Obviously, these ideas overlap. The difference between the two is actually rooted in an academic theory of development (not that it matters). The notion is that industrialisation turns traditional societies into secular-rational ones, while post-industrial development brings about a shift towards values of self-expression.
The usefulness of dividing the broad subject of "values" in this way can be seen by plotting countries on a chart whose axes are the two spectrums. The chart alongside shows how the countries group: as you would expect, poor countries, with low self-expression and high levels of traditionalism, are at the bottom left, richer Europeans to the top right.
But America's position is odd. On the quality-of-life axis, it is like Europe: a little more "self-expressive" than Catholic countries, such as France and Italy, a little less so than Protestant ones such as Holland or Sweden. This is more than a matter of individual preference. The "quality of life" axis is the one most closely associated with political and economic freedoms. So Mr Bush is right when he claims that Americans and European share common values of democracy and freedom and that these have broad implications because, at root, alliances are built on such common interests.
But now look at America's position on the traditional-secular axis. It is far more traditional than any west European country except Ireland. It is more traditional than any place at all in central or Eastern Europe. America is near the bottom-right corner of the chart, a strange mix of tradition and self-expression.
Americans are the most patriotic people in the survey: 72% say they are very proud of their country (and this bit of the poll was taken before September 2001). That puts America in the same category as India and Turkey. The survey reckons religious attitudes are the single most important component of traditionalism. On that score, Americans are closer to Nigerians and Turks than Germans or Swedes.
Of course, America is hardly monolithic. It is strikingly traditional on average. But, to generalise wildly, that average is made up of two Americas: one that is almost as secular as Europe (and tends to vote Democratic), and one that is more traditionalist than the average (and tends to vote Republican).
But even this makes America more distinctive. Partly because America is divided in this way, its domestic political debate revolves around values to a much greater extent than in Europe. Political affiliation there is based less on income than on church-going, attitudes to abortion and attitudes to race. In America, even technical matters become moral questions. It is almost impossible to have a debate about gun registration without it becoming an argument about the right to self-defence. In Europe, even moral questions are sometimes treated as technical ones, as happened with stem-cell research.
The difference between the two appears to be widening. Since the first world values survey in 1981, every western country has shifted markedly along the spectrum towards greater self-expression. America is no exception. But on the other spectrum America seems to have become more traditional, rather than less. The change is only a half-step. And Italy, Spain and France have taken the same half-step. But if you look at Europe as a whole, the small movement back towards old-fashioned virtues in big Catholic countries is far outweighed by the stride the other way in post-Protestant countries such as Germany and Sweden. On average, then, the values gap between America and European countries seems to be widening.
Last month, John Ray took exception to my argument that it is the moralizing force brought to bear by Judeo-Christianity's continued grip on the American soul that, more than anything else, enabled the U.S. to fend of the statism which is destroying much of the rest of the West. He argued that his homeland, Australia had come up with a novel secular social code in place of Christianity but that it remained significantly freer than Europe too (see his posts for December 26, 2002). But if you follow the link to that chart you'll see that Australia registers nearly as far to the traditional values side as we do and is in fact quite unsecular by contrast to the rest of the West.
Also noteworthy is Ireland's position and its recent astronomical score in the ranking of nations by how globalized their economies are. There's quite a delightful irony in the idea that the religiosity which was long seen as benighting Ireland is now conferring enormous advantages on her.
Posted by Orrin Judd at January 8, 2003 8:22 PMFrance also scored lowest in the recent
survey of church attendance -- 11%.
So it is a Catholic or a Christian country,
or isn't it?
It's a Marxist country.
Posted by: pj at January 8, 2003 8:45 PMWasn't it Voltaire who said that France would remain Catholic long after it had ceased to be Christian?
Posted by: mike earl at January 8, 2003 11:46 PMWonder where Israel falls on the axes in question?
Posted by: Gil Gilliam at January 9, 2003 12:45 AMOrrin,
Ever asked an Irishman/woman lately how the Irish currently regard the Catholic Church?
The question being, is it because of religiosity that Ireland is succeeding? Or precisely because they have succeeded in "casting off the shackles" (see also, perhaps, Quebec)?
Or do the positive values of the religion that was jettisoned linger on, continuing to hold sway for the next generation(s)? Do these values eventually "disappear"? Or are they somehow transmuted or distilled into a new coherent value system....
I think a government committed to a strong business environment and generous European subsidies have had far more impact on Ireland's globalised economy than its' religiosity.
Posted by: M Ali Choudhury at January 9, 2003 3:13 AMOrrin, who worries about demographics,
praises Ireland, one of the least fecund places
on Earth, where people don't marry until
they are in their 30s.
Yet it's booming, he says.
How are they going to keep that up?
I have had more to say on this elsewhere but the idea that you need Christianity for high civility, high trust, high co-operation, high efficiency, low crime-rates and low taxes founders most obviously in the case of Japan -- which outdoes the USA on all those measures and is not even monotheistic. The Japanese are superstitious polytheists.
Posted by: John Ray at January 9, 2003 5:15 AMArgue with the poll not me--it's the people of Ireland who characterize themselves as religious, not secular.
Posted by: oj at January 9, 2003 8:01 AMHarry: Joyce once commented that the Irish procreate just enough to propagate successfully their cantankerous race. I would suppose that they just have a different sense of supply & demand on this subject than the rest of us, but demographically their performance in settling vast portions of the US and Canada doesn't seem too taudry.
Posted by: Tom Roberts at January 9, 2003 8:16 PMI will be posting a reply to Orrin in about an hour's time on this issue -- on ">http://jonjayray.blogspot.com
Posted by: John Ray at January 10, 2003 1:07 AMIt's not Christianity that makes the USA such a success, it's that it is not a central tenet in our government. Although Christianity is all pervasive in our culture (I'm not a Christian and find it annoying, but that said, I've lived in non-Christian societies in Asia and while I found the lack of Christianity very enjoyable the majority religion in those places is not mine either). As a religious minority you must just get used to it. However, I was never denied the chance to succeed in any endeavor simply based on my religion, eventhough it is not the majority belief system in this country. Secularism is a virtue.
Posted by: Moira Rogow at January 10, 2003 8:30 AMThe idea that Christianity is central to western prosperity and freedom is empirical, not revealed truth. As such, I don't have much problem with it as a non-Christian (although something of a special case non-Christian). There does seem to be something here worth explaining: why are European civilizations, and those derived from them, so much richer and freer than other civilizations. If we're going to reject the idea of white racial superiority -- as I do -- then you're left with only a few possible explanations. (Note: I take it as a given that everyone reading this understands why richer and freer go hand in hand.)
There are, it seems to me, three broad explanations: randomness; geographic; or cultural. As randomness is can only be proven by disproving the other possibilities, I'll ignore it.
Geographic is a possibility. As an explanation, it is currently in favor with the left, having been argued about as well as it could be by Diamond in Guns, Germs, and Steel
. Having read the book, I was unconvinced. It is certainly not worthless, but life was nasty, brutish and short for all cultures; I'm unconvinced by the argument that small, easily defensible countries were either unique to Europe or more able to capitalize on their advantages than other countries. (Also, note that these small countries arose out of the debris of a continent wide empire and owed allegiance to a continent wide church for a millienium and a half.
This leaves us with culture, which I think means, in context, either language or religion. (Interrupted because I've got to shut my computer down)
Tom, Ireland was the most densely populated
part of Europe in 1800, with a population of
8 million, attributable, presumably, to potatoes
and religion.
The failure of the Irish to keep procreating in
Ireland after the famine needs explaining, as
does the failure of the French to maintain
their population starting around 1870.
Religion is an all-purpose answer and therefore
not an answer at all.
The current wealth of the West is due
entirely to science and rational application of
technology to problems.
To take an example, the output of work from
steam engines increased by a factor of around
20 in the first 150 years after Newcomen
devised the first useful engine.
It would be absurd to attribute this to language,
race or culture.
You idiots would argue away the very ground you stand on. God laughs. (Be thankful he only laughs.)
Posted by: ct at January 11, 2003 1:59 AMI repeatedly run into two arguments from devoted Christians. One is that America is great because of its "Christian" foundations. The people advancing this argument behave as if America was the first Christian nation ever. It wasn't. In fact, it was the first wholly secular nation. It was, however, preceded by scores of so-called "Christian" nations whose legacies are unending violence and war, and this old school model of Christianity is still the dominant one. I'm not sure that American Christians will want to include the Serbia of the 1990's in the category of "Christian" nations, but there you go: when we're looking at what makes a nation "Christian" we need to look at the whole picture, and this is what American Christians simply will not do.
The other is that somehow, ethics and morals are unique to Christianity. This attitude is maddeningly arrogant, especially when one takes into account that the very concept of ethics as we know it today was developed by a polytheistic people. You know, "superstitious polytheism." ;) The ancient Greeks - Socrates, Plato, Aristotle - were pagan. Pagan to the core. Not Christian. On a more immediate level, the argument that only Christians are moral and ethical falls apart when you look at people who self-identify as atheists. Are prisons filled with self-identified atheists?
Well, Israel certainly isn't Christian, and the robust high-tech economy and democratic government aren't being run by the religious demographic, most of whom just want to study Torah all day, financially supported by their secular brethren.
Also 40% of Silicon Valley companies are owned by Indian immigrants, who now have the highest income of any ethnic group in the US. Most of them aren't Christian either.
This is as ill-thought-out as that guy Whittle's 2nd amendment essay. It's not that you and Bill took positions I disagree with, it's that you leave gaping holes big enough to drive a truck through. At least do a little research. Sheesh.
Touche, Ann.
The United States was the first, and is still
almost the only, Christian country with an
Article VI in its Constitution. That's the difference.
Indians are successful in America, therefore it's not Christianity that is at the foundation of their success. OK. Notice they had to come to the Christian west to find the opportunity and to be successful. Again, you people are so stupid it's beyond comedy at this point.
The Reformation unleashed everything you see around you today. All the revolutions in science and technology, all the success of western Europe and the United States and their influence around the world for promoting freedom and life and light.
A note to the Greek scholar: Moses preceded Socrates by a thousand years. (And beyond that the connection between the ancient Greeks and the Hebrew Bible is more in the realm of mystery than in any set historical paradigm academia has to offer. A word to the wise is sufficient. Though please don't freak out on that statement, just put it on a shelf if it gets you all excited.)
Indians are successful in America, therefore it's not Christianity that is at the foundation of their success. OK. Notice they had to come to the Christian west to find the opportunity and to be successful.
You're missing the point. The opportunities to be had in America are not in place because of Christianity. They're in place in spite of it.
Again, you people are so stupid it's beyond comedy at this point.
Thanks. ;)
The Reformation unleashed everything you see around you today. All the revolutions in science and technology, all the success of western Europe and the United States and their influence around the world for promoting freedom and life and light.
1. The Reformation was a revolt against the centralized church.
2. The United States is a result of the Enlightenment - a different thing. The Enlightenment was the promotion of reason over blind religiousity, among other things.
3. I defy you to point out where in the US Constitution the declaration is made that the US is a Christian nation.
A note to the Greek scholar:
"Scholar" ... gee, I kinda like that. I'm not sure how having read some of Plato's works (like any half-educated Westerner should, IMO) makes me a scholar of Greek, but if it's really that impressive, then ... OK!
Moses preceded Socrates by a thousand years.
1. Historians (real ones, not the ones funded by Pat Robertson et al) are not even sure of the actual existance of a person named Moses.
2. There is a huge difference between the Ten Commandments, which is a set of rules by which individuals should live, and the philosophies of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. The latter men wrote extensively about ethical theory and how it applies not only to the life of the individual but also to the government of nations. Plato's "Crito", for example, is a treatise that forms the very foundation for the concept of the rule of law. It's something far, far beyond the scope of the Ten Commandments.
Dry yourself off at some point, Ann.
Posted by: ct at January 12, 2003 8:03 PM