Thanks for the suggestions. I’ll check them out. Am near the end of “Closing of the American Mind “” and he’s discussing the rise of the social sciences vs ‘natural’ which your comment made me think of. More philosophy than I can handle but I’m ploughing thru. I know what you mean by the European nannies, but if you've noticed they are running into problems with the influx of immigrants from the Middle East & Africa who aren't willing to assimilate to an Anglo-Protestant ethic. Yeah, the one that's "systemically racist".
You are doing some heavy reading. You are right that the European nanny states are no Nirvana. it's interesting that we are so often cited as the racist nation among the developed countries, but that's only because the others have so few races, other than the white race, to talk about. You are right that the bigotry of the Europeans is starting to show as immigrants move in. Immigrants assimilate more easily into American than they do into the European countries. And, of course, there's the always present force of anti-Semitism in Europe which dwarfs anything found here. An interesting footnote to the question of racism. We are often told that the fact that blacks are disproportionately incarcerated here is proof of our racist system. But guess where blacks are even more disproportionately incarcerated... Canada. And still more so in the UK and even more so in France. But we don't hear much about it in part because those countries are less apt to air their dirty laundry than is the U.S. and, in part, because blacks make up a much smaller percentage of their populations. So they get much less attention.
Oh... there's so much more I could share, but I will wait to see if you want to continue this thread. If not. I wish you all the best.
I am enjoying this. Do you think what you site is related more to "class" than "race" in Europe? Do you think much of the anti-Semitism is more related to the large number of Muslims coming in or the lingering fundamentalist Protestantism? We have the original sin of slavery, war & Jim Crow while Europe ended slavery by legislation in individual countries. I sometimes wonder if it was a "United States of Europe" would it have been different. Also there were so few black & brown citizens at the time. The Imperialism of Europe was just beginning, so emigration within the empires was minimal. Seems like Brexit is similar to "secession". I value opinions and other points of view. Wish others would join in.
I am enjoying it also. I wouldn't say class so much as race and ethnicity (assuming one thinks of Jews as an ethnic group). You make a good point about the relationship between anti-Semitism and the arrival of large number of Muslims into Europe. I'm sure the Muslims drive up the anti-Semitism, but it would be present even if there were no Muslims in Europe. That would be because of the religious heritage you speak of. But I would say "Christianity" rather than "fundamental Protestantism," because the roots of anti-Semitism in Europe go back to near the origins of Christianity, long before the Protestant Reformation. But even if you take Christianity away, I think there would still be some anti-Semitism in Europe. Less, but some. And that, I think, is because Jews tend to be very successful wherever they have been (and people always hate those who are successful) and because they tend to stick to themselves. There is nothing wrong with the latter, but, sadly, it does bother some.
I said I had some other stuff to share. I did some research on people moving about OECD countries. What I found surprised me greatly. From Pew Research I found the number of Americans living abroad in developed countries and the number coming here from those same countries (simply Google “Origins and Destinations of the World’s Migrants” to see the raw data for yourself). I then took into account each country’s population. The picture is quite remarkable. I should emphasize that I am only talking about people who were born in one country and moved to another (what are often called ex-pats).
Moving up the scale we find that Australians have been ten times more likely to move here than we have been to move there, Japanese have been sixteen times more likely, the Germans and French both eighteen times, the Spanish and the British both nineteen times, Canadians twenty-five times, Italians thirty-five times, the Swiss forty times, the Dutch fifty-eight times, Israelis sixty-four times, Turks seventy-five times, Swedes eighty-three times, Norwegians ninety-five times, South Koreans one hundred four times, New Zealanders one hundred five times, Belgians and Singaporeans one hundred sixteen times, Finns one hundred twenty times, Danes one hundred seventy-three times, Austrians one hundred ninety times, Greeks two hundred twenty-eight times, the Irish three hundred twenty-four times, Czechs three hundred sixty-six times, and Portuguese six hundred twenty-six times more likely to move here than we have been to move there.
The above leaves only the developed countries of Cyprus, Estonia, Iceland, Luxembourg, and Slovenia unaccounted for. I was not able to get precise enough numbers from those five countries to do the same kind of calculation I did for the others, but
the estimates I did get (from the same site), make it clear that the movement in these five remaining countries follows the trend of all those above. Sorry to be so long-winded :), but rather than just cherry-pick a few countries, I figured I would give you all of them.
Thanks for all the interesting info. I have to wonder several things. Are those that emigrate here legally come for opportunities, not just a "better life" (poor) but business related also? Are they coming for tax reasons? We may complain about our taxes, but look at the tax structures of those so-called "social" republics. Some of whom, especially from the Low Countries & Scandinavia, Israel still remain socialistic. It seems those from the Pacific Rim come mostly for the high-tech jobs or because they have family here. Having little exposure to diversity have trouble understanding our issues. Many come from failed Marxist, authoritarian regimes (Eastern Europe). I find it interesting that a good portion of them are educated & motivated tend to become conservatives (not Trumpy) or at least moderates. I know I'm generalizing. Just what I see and experience.
Please note: sometimes when I write here, weird spacing appears where it shouldn't. I'm not sure why. If it happens here, please forgive me.
I imagine they come for all of the reasons you mention and others as well. I found interesting your comment about those who tend to become conservative. Bruce Bawer is an American writer who went to live the Netherlands and then Norway. At first he was amazed by how well informed the people seemed to be. Newspapers were everywhere. But then he noticed that all the opinions expressed in the newspapers ran from the left to the far left. They made the NY Times look positively open minded. :) The same went for the TV stations, the largest being government owned. On another topic he writes:
"Yet as my weeks in the Old World stretched into months, my perceptions shifted. For one thing, I began to appreciate American virtues I’d always taken for granted, or even disdained—among them a lack of self-seriousness, an openness to new experience, an innate optimism, a willingness to think for oneself and question the accepted way of doing things…Europeans might or might not have more of a ‘sense of history’ than Americans (in fact, in a recent study
comparing students’ historical knowledge, the results were pretty much a draw), but America, I saw, had something else that mattered—a belief in the future.
"Yes, many Europeans were book lovers—but which country’s foreign literature engaged them most? America’s. They revered education—but to which country’s universities would they most like to send their children if they had the means? Answer: the same country that performs the majority of the world’s scientific research, wins most of the
Nobel Prizes, and has twice as many university graduates as Europe…
"But the longer I stayed in Europe, the more I found myself viewing American ambition as a good thing. Life without it,
I saw, could be a pretty pallid, hollow affair. Furthermore, I’d begun to see that in much of Western Europe, the appreciation of everyday pleasures was bound up with stifling conformity, a discomfort with excellence, and an overt
disapproval of those who strove too visibly to better their lot. Sometimes it could even seem as if Western Europe’s
core belief was in mediocrity.
"As I sought to ease my way into Dutch society, I felt the Dutch pushing back. I learned that if America was a melting pot…however long I might stay in the Netherlands…I would always remain an outsider.
"I’d loved the peaceableness of Dutch men as compared to the macho swaggering of Americans. But the flip side of that un-macho behavior was a kind of passivity that, in the aftermath of 9/11, would emerge as something less than a
perfect virtue."
Bawer also began to see that the “enlightened” Norwegians, and Scandinavians in general, who had prided themselves for so long on being free of the racism that plagued the United States,
suddenly felt the sting of accusations of racism when their lilywhite nations first experienced significant immigration of people of color at the end of the twentieth century and beginning of the twenty-first century. As Bawer notes, “Suddenly, their smug certainties were gone.” All they could do was smother their misgivings.
And one more selection from Bawer:
"...[Unni Wikan, a professor of social
anthropology at the University of Oslo] explains that the difference boils down to American realism versus European
naivete. The pillars of U.S. immigration policy are integration and employment; officials in Western Europe, by contrast, thought they were doing immigrants a favor by not requiring—or even encouraging—either. One might wonder why European authorities didn’t try to learn from the spectacularly successful history of U.S. immigration. I’ve lived in Europe long enough to know why: they didn’t see it as a success story. In the eyes of the Western European establishment, America is a fundamentally racist and materialistic nation that cruelly compels immigrants to shake off their identities and fend for themselves under a heartless,
dog-eat-dog economic system…
"While immigrants in America are encouraged to become full members of society—and are rewarded for doing so—in Europe…the establishment prefers its immigrants unintegrated. Why? The supposed reason is that it respects differences, the real reason, as I gradually came to understand, was a profound discomfort with the idea of ‘them’ becoming ‘us.’ Immigrants in Europe are allowed to perpetuate even the most atrocious aspects of their culture, but the price for this is that no one, including themselves, will ever think of them as Dutch or German or Swedish. Most Americans, I think, would be shocked to realize how far short of America Europe falls in this regard.
"Indeed, it’s not going too far to say that there’s a species of bigotry, widespread in Europe, that trumps anything you can easily find in the United States…"
(me again)... maybe these kinds of observations about Europe above also have something to do with people moving here. That and the fact that not everyone wants to live in a cradle-to-grave society with all of its stultifying effects.
Thanks again. The White Sox are beating the Yankees in the "Field of Dreams" game so it's all good (except my Red Sox screwed the pooch again!) I have some time to at least make a dent in all this. Bawer's experience is interesting but not surprising. I wish he'd lived in a more southern (Italy) or diverse country(England or France) for comparison. I believe much of the Northern European attitudes can be attributed to their Lutheran/Calvinism that while encouraging reading & education were strict conformists. (New England Puritans). They were not originally welcoming to non-conformists. Remember William Penn or Roger Williams. Later they may have been abolitionists on religious grounds, but most were not inclusionists. Those countries also lack of experience with immigration or invasion except from other Caucasian groups, if not being the invaders. The cultures of whom were not so dissimilar as to not be easily integrated and then accepting of a version of Christianity about the same time. Also who wants to emigrate to places that are cold & dark much of the year. Southern Europeans (mostly Catholic) are more diverse, with their own bigotries, and have a older history punctuated by invasions from several different peoples who then settled there. The Catholic Church cared more for the money they could collect & the power they could wield to be too concerned who the people actually were. Also those countries that rim the Mediterranean had long histories of trading with Asia & Northern Africa.
In Niall Ferguson's book "Civilization", he discusses imperialism in various forms, i.e. British, Spanish and Portuguese, much of what is familiar. But in Chapter 4 "Medicine", he talks about the scramble for Africa and I was totally unaware of how badly the Dutch and Germans treated the Africans in their territories. Those sent to the America's as slaves could in a weird way be considered the "luckier". They killed them off instead of sending them home as slaves or sending slaves to other territories. They wanted the land & resources not the people.
Enough! Just got scary as the Yankees went ahead in the ninth, but Chicago had a walk off as I was typing, so I can go to bed unstressed. Hope you had a good evening also.
Thanks for the suggestions. I’ll check them out. Am near the end of “Closing of the American Mind “” and he’s discussing the rise of the social sciences vs ‘natural’ which your comment made me think of. More philosophy than I can handle but I’m ploughing thru. I know what you mean by the European nannies, but if you've noticed they are running into problems with the influx of immigrants from the Middle East & Africa who aren't willing to assimilate to an Anglo-Protestant ethic. Yeah, the one that's "systemically racist".
You are doing some heavy reading. You are right that the European nanny states are no Nirvana. it's interesting that we are so often cited as the racist nation among the developed countries, but that's only because the others have so few races, other than the white race, to talk about. You are right that the bigotry of the Europeans is starting to show as immigrants move in. Immigrants assimilate more easily into American than they do into the European countries. And, of course, there's the always present force of anti-Semitism in Europe which dwarfs anything found here. An interesting footnote to the question of racism. We are often told that the fact that blacks are disproportionately incarcerated here is proof of our racist system. But guess where blacks are even more disproportionately incarcerated... Canada. And still more so in the UK and even more so in France. But we don't hear much about it in part because those countries are less apt to air their dirty laundry than is the U.S. and, in part, because blacks make up a much smaller percentage of their populations. So they get much less attention.
Oh... there's so much more I could share, but I will wait to see if you want to continue this thread. If not. I wish you all the best.
I am enjoying this. Do you think what you site is related more to "class" than "race" in Europe? Do you think much of the anti-Semitism is more related to the large number of Muslims coming in or the lingering fundamentalist Protestantism? We have the original sin of slavery, war & Jim Crow while Europe ended slavery by legislation in individual countries. I sometimes wonder if it was a "United States of Europe" would it have been different. Also there were so few black & brown citizens at the time. The Imperialism of Europe was just beginning, so emigration within the empires was minimal. Seems like Brexit is similar to "secession". I value opinions and other points of view. Wish others would join in.
I am enjoying it also. I wouldn't say class so much as race and ethnicity (assuming one thinks of Jews as an ethnic group). You make a good point about the relationship between anti-Semitism and the arrival of large number of Muslims into Europe. I'm sure the Muslims drive up the anti-Semitism, but it would be present even if there were no Muslims in Europe. That would be because of the religious heritage you speak of. But I would say "Christianity" rather than "fundamental Protestantism," because the roots of anti-Semitism in Europe go back to near the origins of Christianity, long before the Protestant Reformation. But even if you take Christianity away, I think there would still be some anti-Semitism in Europe. Less, but some. And that, I think, is because Jews tend to be very successful wherever they have been (and people always hate those who are successful) and because they tend to stick to themselves. There is nothing wrong with the latter, but, sadly, it does bother some.
I said I had some other stuff to share. I did some research on people moving about OECD countries. What I found surprised me greatly. From Pew Research I found the number of Americans living abroad in developed countries and the number coming here from those same countries (simply Google “Origins and Destinations of the World’s Migrants” to see the raw data for yourself). I then took into account each country’s population. The picture is quite remarkable. I should emphasize that I am only talking about people who were born in one country and moved to another (what are often called ex-pats).
Moving up the scale we find that Australians have been ten times more likely to move here than we have been to move there, Japanese have been sixteen times more likely, the Germans and French both eighteen times, the Spanish and the British both nineteen times, Canadians twenty-five times, Italians thirty-five times, the Swiss forty times, the Dutch fifty-eight times, Israelis sixty-four times, Turks seventy-five times, Swedes eighty-three times, Norwegians ninety-five times, South Koreans one hundred four times, New Zealanders one hundred five times, Belgians and Singaporeans one hundred sixteen times, Finns one hundred twenty times, Danes one hundred seventy-three times, Austrians one hundred ninety times, Greeks two hundred twenty-eight times, the Irish three hundred twenty-four times, Czechs three hundred sixty-six times, and Portuguese six hundred twenty-six times more likely to move here than we have been to move there.
The above leaves only the developed countries of Cyprus, Estonia, Iceland, Luxembourg, and Slovenia unaccounted for. I was not able to get precise enough numbers from those five countries to do the same kind of calculation I did for the others, but
the estimates I did get (from the same site), make it clear that the movement in these five remaining countries follows the trend of all those above. Sorry to be so long-winded :), but rather than just cherry-pick a few countries, I figured I would give you all of them.
Now you can get back to Harold Bloom. :)
Thanks for all the interesting info. I have to wonder several things. Are those that emigrate here legally come for opportunities, not just a "better life" (poor) but business related also? Are they coming for tax reasons? We may complain about our taxes, but look at the tax structures of those so-called "social" republics. Some of whom, especially from the Low Countries & Scandinavia, Israel still remain socialistic. It seems those from the Pacific Rim come mostly for the high-tech jobs or because they have family here. Having little exposure to diversity have trouble understanding our issues. Many come from failed Marxist, authoritarian regimes (Eastern Europe). I find it interesting that a good portion of them are educated & motivated tend to become conservatives (not Trumpy) or at least moderates. I know I'm generalizing. Just what I see and experience.
Please note: sometimes when I write here, weird spacing appears where it shouldn't. I'm not sure why. If it happens here, please forgive me.
I imagine they come for all of the reasons you mention and others as well. I found interesting your comment about those who tend to become conservative. Bruce Bawer is an American writer who went to live the Netherlands and then Norway. At first he was amazed by how well informed the people seemed to be. Newspapers were everywhere. But then he noticed that all the opinions expressed in the newspapers ran from the left to the far left. They made the NY Times look positively open minded. :) The same went for the TV stations, the largest being government owned. On another topic he writes:
"Yet as my weeks in the Old World stretched into months, my perceptions shifted. For one thing, I began to appreciate American virtues I’d always taken for granted, or even disdained—among them a lack of self-seriousness, an openness to new experience, an innate optimism, a willingness to think for oneself and question the accepted way of doing things…Europeans might or might not have more of a ‘sense of history’ than Americans (in fact, in a recent study
comparing students’ historical knowledge, the results were pretty much a draw), but America, I saw, had something else that mattered—a belief in the future.
"Yes, many Europeans were book lovers—but which country’s foreign literature engaged them most? America’s. They revered education—but to which country’s universities would they most like to send their children if they had the means? Answer: the same country that performs the majority of the world’s scientific research, wins most of the
Nobel Prizes, and has twice as many university graduates as Europe…
"But the longer I stayed in Europe, the more I found myself viewing American ambition as a good thing. Life without it,
I saw, could be a pretty pallid, hollow affair. Furthermore, I’d begun to see that in much of Western Europe, the appreciation of everyday pleasures was bound up with stifling conformity, a discomfort with excellence, and an overt
disapproval of those who strove too visibly to better their lot. Sometimes it could even seem as if Western Europe’s
core belief was in mediocrity.
"As I sought to ease my way into Dutch society, I felt the Dutch pushing back. I learned that if America was a melting pot…however long I might stay in the Netherlands…I would always remain an outsider.
"I’d loved the peaceableness of Dutch men as compared to the macho swaggering of Americans. But the flip side of that un-macho behavior was a kind of passivity that, in the aftermath of 9/11, would emerge as something less than a
perfect virtue."
Bawer also began to see that the “enlightened” Norwegians, and Scandinavians in general, who had prided themselves for so long on being free of the racism that plagued the United States,
suddenly felt the sting of accusations of racism when their lilywhite nations first experienced significant immigration of people of color at the end of the twentieth century and beginning of the twenty-first century. As Bawer notes, “Suddenly, their smug certainties were gone.” All they could do was smother their misgivings.
And one more selection from Bawer:
"...[Unni Wikan, a professor of social
anthropology at the University of Oslo] explains that the difference boils down to American realism versus European
naivete. The pillars of U.S. immigration policy are integration and employment; officials in Western Europe, by contrast, thought they were doing immigrants a favor by not requiring—or even encouraging—either. One might wonder why European authorities didn’t try to learn from the spectacularly successful history of U.S. immigration. I’ve lived in Europe long enough to know why: they didn’t see it as a success story. In the eyes of the Western European establishment, America is a fundamentally racist and materialistic nation that cruelly compels immigrants to shake off their identities and fend for themselves under a heartless,
dog-eat-dog economic system…
"While immigrants in America are encouraged to become full members of society—and are rewarded for doing so—in Europe…the establishment prefers its immigrants unintegrated. Why? The supposed reason is that it respects differences, the real reason, as I gradually came to understand, was a profound discomfort with the idea of ‘them’ becoming ‘us.’ Immigrants in Europe are allowed to perpetuate even the most atrocious aspects of their culture, but the price for this is that no one, including themselves, will ever think of them as Dutch or German or Swedish. Most Americans, I think, would be shocked to realize how far short of America Europe falls in this regard.
"Indeed, it’s not going too far to say that there’s a species of bigotry, widespread in Europe, that trumps anything you can easily find in the United States…"
(me again)... maybe these kinds of observations about Europe above also have something to do with people moving here. That and the fact that not everyone wants to live in a cradle-to-grave society with all of its stultifying effects.
Enough for now! Have a good evening!
Thanks again. The White Sox are beating the Yankees in the "Field of Dreams" game so it's all good (except my Red Sox screwed the pooch again!) I have some time to at least make a dent in all this. Bawer's experience is interesting but not surprising. I wish he'd lived in a more southern (Italy) or diverse country(England or France) for comparison. I believe much of the Northern European attitudes can be attributed to their Lutheran/Calvinism that while encouraging reading & education were strict conformists. (New England Puritans). They were not originally welcoming to non-conformists. Remember William Penn or Roger Williams. Later they may have been abolitionists on religious grounds, but most were not inclusionists. Those countries also lack of experience with immigration or invasion except from other Caucasian groups, if not being the invaders. The cultures of whom were not so dissimilar as to not be easily integrated and then accepting of a version of Christianity about the same time. Also who wants to emigrate to places that are cold & dark much of the year. Southern Europeans (mostly Catholic) are more diverse, with their own bigotries, and have a older history punctuated by invasions from several different peoples who then settled there. The Catholic Church cared more for the money they could collect & the power they could wield to be too concerned who the people actually were. Also those countries that rim the Mediterranean had long histories of trading with Asia & Northern Africa.
In Niall Ferguson's book "Civilization", he discusses imperialism in various forms, i.e. British, Spanish and Portuguese, much of what is familiar. But in Chapter 4 "Medicine", he talks about the scramble for Africa and I was totally unaware of how badly the Dutch and Germans treated the Africans in their territories. Those sent to the America's as slaves could in a weird way be considered the "luckier". They killed them off instead of sending them home as slaves or sending slaves to other territories. They wanted the land & resources not the people.
Enough! Just got scary as the Yankees went ahead in the ninth, but Chicago had a walk off as I was typing, so I can go to bed unstressed. Hope you had a good evening also.