Diadem wrote:But really are an anomaly in many ways, when you compare them to other rich, first-world countries. Their justice system often resembles a third world country more than a first world one. Idem for their social security system, their medical system, their democratic system, their treatment of minorities, the list goes on.
Are you referring to the common law based justice system? I hadn't realized Continental European law, I mean, er uh, civil law was so superior.
Nor was I aware that socialism was objectively the best socioeconomic system, despite the large number of European countries with historically high unemployment.
I wouldn't fault you for being unaware that the US spends more on healthcare as a percent of GDP and thus more total money than any other country in the world and that a third of all Americans are covered by Medicare and Medicaid, Federal programs. As a kicker, emergency care is also apparently covered for the uninsured. I can't seem to find it at the moment, but I read a long article in the last year describing how US healthcare is actually objectively better (objective by virtue of a number of quantitative values such as wait times, time spent with doctor, mortality rate, etc) than European countries, with the major caveat that those wedged between Medicaid eligible and the upper-middle class largely being left in the cold. My apologies, I am not always very good at remembering the right keywords to conjure an article on the Google.
It's funny that you call Europe democratic, since I've always considered proportional electoral systems to be the least democratic form of a republic. Individual voter power is considerably reduced when you can't even control which individuals will be theoretically representing you. Are referendums are regular occurrence in Europe? We don't have them nationally in the US, but they're quite common at the state level. I'm from Oregon where we usually have at least six issues up put up for referendum annually at the statewide level and dozens at the local level.
It may be hard to see from way across the ocean, but racism in the US is largely a social problem, not a legal one. Where it crosses into the government, it is a matter of racists having government jobs, not official policy. But in Europe, it gets enshrined in the law. There's also a lot less freedom of speech and freedom of religion in Europe. Arizona, of course, has gotten a lot of attention for their insane policies, but I would remind you that they're a national embarrassment. And I shouldn't gloss over the persecution of homosexuals and the reproductive rights of women; I like to think those are the birth pains of the coming time when the Republicans who are so very good at staying in office in spite of laughably low approval ratings finally die, either metaphorically in their careers or literally of old age. Of course, I won't get into the historical persecution of minority groups in Europe and America. History is hideously racist everywhere you go.
Maybe I am being too hard on you. Maybe I misread your snark as an assertion that America is still a backwards, rustic nation of barbarians awkwardly holding forks. Maybe you were just saying that the US and Europe are different in a number of ways and the old meaning of First World has become outdated, I would certainly agree with that. I wouldn't group the US with the countries traditionally called the Third World or the Second World for that matter. In a lot of ways, it would be more useful to redivide the world by the old linguistic supergroups, the Anglophone World (plus Japan), the Francophone World, the Hispanophone World, the Arabophone, the Germanic, the Slavic, the Austro/Polynesian, the Sinitic, the Turkic, the Afro-Asiatic.
