Doctor, My Eyes!

Joel Stein used to review movies for Entertainment Weekly (EW) and I always found him annoying. Here he touches on something that shows up in surveys all the time. Conservative Americans are more attached to their country than are liberals. As much as I liked this article especially the end, I think he misses something. First, Democrat and Republican are short hand but they do not capture what's going on here. Lincoln Chaffee was a Republican. He did not have a greater love of country than either Robert Byrd or God knows, Zel Miller. American Steelworkers are usually more patriotic than nominally Republican bond traders.

There is a cultural expression of transnational progressivism that loves certain ideas more than the particular of where one comes from. Stein touches on it when he speaks of the other wealthy, advanced democracies. While it is inconceivable to me that anyone could seriously believe the United States of America is not sexually expressive enough, Stein seems to think so, and admires Sweden most of all!

All of the places Stein most admires do not have children enough to reach replacement levels. They all have low levels of church attendance. Gay "rights" are paramount and in most of them political correctness surpasses free speech rights. Most make it more difficult to own a firearm and indeed in some, it is illegal to defend yourself against attack. All of them have a higher overall tax rate and larger public spending than the United States. All of them have militaries that are significantly weaker, less well funded and less respected than those of the United States. All of them have traded hight rates of unemployment, particulalry youth unemployment, for difficulty in firing the people who have jobs. (Surprisingly all of them have abortion laws more protective of unborn life than America but that is an artifact of our Supreme Court making abortion law and not the American people).

There is a sensibility that the American Left is so enamored of that it can not see its own countries virtues even when they comport with things the American Left wants.

For instance, race relations in Sweden and France are so bad that they have frequent riots we have not seen since the 60's or at least the Rodney King police verdict. Whole areas of their society can not get an ambulence without police escort. Social mobility in some of them is virtually non-existant compared to the United States. All of Europe either entered or pledged to meet Kyoto goals, but American under George Bush has had more success reducing greenhouse gasses. Crime is lower in New York City and Dallas than it is in London. Yet the latter has all the social programs and even free health care that liberals tell us is why we have crime.

I think what Stein is talking about is impervious to facts or argument. Many on the Left do not like America because of how it acts and its failure to bend the knee to certain types of enviro talk, or peacenickery or other internationally favored argle bargle, and go on disliking it even when the results for actual people are better in America than in Europe.

I do not believe Obama will change this.