undertheice
Well-Known Member
i came across this article (http://worldblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/10/28/5360324-europe-dismayed-as-midterms-highlight-obamas-struggles) while doing my daily search through the trash that passes for news and it just highlighted the many differences between what we are and what many folks would like us to be.
there is a certain naivete in the european political sphere that we here seem to lack. we are certainly as capable as they are of falling for the rhetoric of political animals and hoping for that utopian dream of universal equality, but our realism always keep us from taking that fateful leap into the quagmire of socialistic dependency. where the people of numerous european nations are willing to place an inordinate amount of power into centralized government or follow the rabble and press for policy that seems to be in the best interests of the population as a whole, we always seem to return to the idea that it is more important for the individual to retain his rights than for the majority to exert its control. maybe it's their history, replete with monarchies and the abuses so common to the absolute power wielded over serfs by the traditions of royalty, that leads them to so easily slip into a mob mentality. maybe it's that remembered history of empires that demands they deliver so much power into the hands of those in command. maybe it's just a creeping decrepitude of cultures so far past their prime.
whatever the reasons, they don't seem to understand the underlying conservatism of the american people. they actually believed that the election of the messiah signaled some great sea-change in the attitude of the u.s., that we were going to swing more in line with what they saw as the right and proper course for civilization and abandon the individualist tenets that have grown this country into a major power on the world stage. they don't seem to understand how we could give up the promise of the interdependency of the herd for the pain and uncertain reward of a more individualist method.
i know there are quite a few folks who would love to see us follow the european design, to enter into servitude to the state and abandon dreams of greatness. they often view our history as one episode after another of swaggering egotism and expound on the many sins we are certainly guilty of. i can't help but wonder why they refuse to acknowledge all the good that has gone along with the bad. why is it they seem to forget that this individualistic conservatism has created a nation more powerful than any that has ever come before and more productive and inventive than any nation in recent memory, with a people that has proven itself to be more compassionate and charitable than anywhere else on earth?
there is a certain naivete in the european political sphere that we here seem to lack. we are certainly as capable as they are of falling for the rhetoric of political animals and hoping for that utopian dream of universal equality, but our realism always keep us from taking that fateful leap into the quagmire of socialistic dependency. where the people of numerous european nations are willing to place an inordinate amount of power into centralized government or follow the rabble and press for policy that seems to be in the best interests of the population as a whole, we always seem to return to the idea that it is more important for the individual to retain his rights than for the majority to exert its control. maybe it's their history, replete with monarchies and the abuses so common to the absolute power wielded over serfs by the traditions of royalty, that leads them to so easily slip into a mob mentality. maybe it's that remembered history of empires that demands they deliver so much power into the hands of those in command. maybe it's just a creeping decrepitude of cultures so far past their prime.
whatever the reasons, they don't seem to understand the underlying conservatism of the american people. they actually believed that the election of the messiah signaled some great sea-change in the attitude of the u.s., that we were going to swing more in line with what they saw as the right and proper course for civilization and abandon the individualist tenets that have grown this country into a major power on the world stage. they don't seem to understand how we could give up the promise of the interdependency of the herd for the pain and uncertain reward of a more individualist method.
i know there are quite a few folks who would love to see us follow the european design, to enter into servitude to the state and abandon dreams of greatness. they often view our history as one episode after another of swaggering egotism and expound on the many sins we are certainly guilty of. i can't help but wonder why they refuse to acknowledge all the good that has gone along with the bad. why is it they seem to forget that this individualistic conservatism has created a nation more powerful than any that has ever come before and more productive and inventive than any nation in recent memory, with a people that has proven itself to be more compassionate and charitable than anywhere else on earth?
