I would say I am uniquely placed to comment on US vs Europe, as I have lived in both places for a fairly long length of time.
The SC judges are approximately 0.0001% of the population who affect 100% of the population with their decisions. Their makeup therefore matters immensely.
Their religious backgrounds are a problem because they clearly drive their decision-making when it comes to their judicial decisions.
The US works as a country (even polarised like it is now) because of the separation of church and state. It really is one of the pillars of US society given how much of a melting pot the country is due to immigration. This has always been a key strength for the country on a global basis as well (on a forward-looking basis as well as success attracts talented immigrants and individuals).
The current SC has become a threat to that pillar. I see no point in sugarcoating this. Thats the reality that I see now.
There are really two different religious impulses, in my opinion.
The Roman Catholic position on abortion uses reason to justify paternalism. Smart people use reason to determine that the fetus might be a person, therefore abortion should be illegal. It is not so different from arguing that scientific evidence about the danger of smoking means all tobacco products should be illegal.
Opposition to teaching evolution comes from the opposite impulse. The original intent of the Protestant Reformation’s emphasis on Biblical authority was to break people free of the tyranny of corrupt Church elites. After being educated, every person could read and understand the Bible for themselves. While this seems impossible to us now, they somehow imagined everybody would agree on what the Bible meant, if only they could read it.
I think what the US is really struggling with is different from either of these issues. It is about people valuing will-to-power over truth. Many people seem to act as if: if I want something to be true, then it will be. This leaves no room for reason to tell us our common interests. Instead of being about finding the common good, elections become exercises of raw political power and this is not enough to give them moral authority.
However, I think it is important to recognize that education and science (including the social sciences) is also used to justify the enormous inequality in our society. Unfortunately, more education doesn’t make you a morally better person, or make give you a moral right to prosperity. We shouldn’t be surprised that there is an anti-intellectual movement among the working class.
I think what you’re perceiving is an intersection of three (not mutually exclusive) phenomena:
A belief by some conservatives that schools (elementary, middle, high, and college/university) are a platform for liberals to program perceived liberal values (tolerance for LGBT folks, critical assessment of some of the darker aspects of American History, environmental concerns, science over religion);
Racism; and
A desire to instill a particular set of religious values in one’s kids, without need to “double-pay” for both public and private/parochial schools.
It could be argued that there isn’t much practical difference between the first of those and a suppression of critical thought…but I think some who would subscribe to such an intent would view their stance as actually being one of protecting kids from what they see as irrational indoctrination.
I think the main things that have changed in the past 40 years (i.e., since I became aware of such things, growing up in the Bible Belt) are:
The acceptance of certain things in mainstream society (e.g. homosexuality), widening the gap between “mainstreamness” and social conservatism; and
The evolution of communications (the rise of 24/7 news channels, the rise of conservative talk radio, social media…) to facilitate expressions of social conservatives’ disgruntlement.
I think another factor is the baby boomers entering old age. Older people (as a cohort) are always more conservative. I don’t believe the US has ever had so many of them.
Always? I would add the words “on average” to your above comment. It is not 100% of all boomers. All the boomers I know are pretty liberal…some of them are even American!
I’ve always wondered why any of these things you mentioned are considered to be bad things. I’ve never gotten a coherent response from any conservative that explains their position without resorting to religion or racism.
I agree with this. I disagree with the different comment you made earlier:
I think there is a tradition of sound and even outstanding Catholic schools in the US.
I haven’t. I’ve actually attended US public schools (more than 20 years ago), my children did, and my grandchildren did. I don’t see an obvious trend toward “religious teachings”.
Maybe part of it is that I can relate to schools more than 20 years ago, so that is my “base case”.
What’s the biggest problem in America? Well based on the 30 posts above it’s that people exist that don’t agree with you all. And the people you hate? Well they don’t like you cause you don’t agree with them.
We don’t agree because the two sides have a completely different set of facts on most issues.
Prior to Trumpism, I think we had a common set of facts, but would pick and choose the set of facts that we want to justify our position and grumble about the importance of the ones that might refute it. From day 1, Trump brought in “alternative facts” and demonstrated how flat out lying to the American people was a viable political position as long as it let them feel good about their own feelings about issues.
This isn’t anything new - I think it ultimately started years ago with Rush Limbaugh and conservative talk radio, but it wasn’t until social media came along to expand the reach of this “alternative thinking” type of content through various blog posts linked on Facebook and Twitter and then into conservative podcasts available 24/7.
Speaking of alternative realities: going back over a century, William Randolph Hearst’s wikipedia page genuinely comes with a disclaimer that historians dispute Hearst’s claim that his propaganda was responsible for the Spanish American war. The crap that he and Pulitzer put out would be the envy of Rupert Murdoch.
That is a fair point. They have historically existed, but it was far harder to test the waters on extreme thinking. Talk radio provided a platform when many tried and failed to connect to a critical mass of viewers, so the views died off for the most extreme. Social media is virtually free with an unlimited number of do-overs to gather enough of a following to create an echo chamber that anyone else can observe.
I think the issue is not so much the message itself. It’s how easy it has become for people to only read the message they want to read.
The press always ambiguously, uncomfortably, encourages both critical dialogue and uncritical affirmation.
As competitive pressure and innovation have allowed the press to become an increasingly effective consumer product, the balance has shifted too much towards enabling uncritical affirmation.
This is made worse when fox news, and talk radio, are both aligned with partisan political parties power, and don’t care about the truth.