Sally Redux

yeah that's it.
Still called Mexicans.

gradboy

I'm a fan of his in general, but Barack Obama is one of the worst offenders in this regard:

So having a multiethnic family spread across the world, and attending good universities is unique to America now?

One explanation I've heard for all this is that until about the 1950s, the US really was pretty exceptional in many of these regards - free speech, equal rights, multiethnic society, lots of immigration. (unless you were one of several oppressed groups). These days there are loads of countries like this, but many Americans can't let go of their exceptional past, in the same way that many British can't let go of the empire.

gradboy

robin1234

But even in the first half of the twentieth century the US was not exceptional in these regards. The US had very restrictive immigration policies from (I think?) 1917 onwards. Canada, Argentina, South Africa, Australia, the United Kingdom (to name just a few foreign countries) had lots of immigration and were very multiethnic. (Albeit more or less restricted to white Europeans, including Jews and people from the Levant.)

Sally Redux

Didn't Britain take in quite a number of runaway slaves from the US? One of the pictures on Nelson's column is said to attest to this.

robin1234

Yes and Britain and Canada liberated many thousands of American slaves during the War of 1812 and gave them land in Nova Scotia and elsewhere in Canada.

Egon

The bit in bold is the key here and reminds me of my main grumble with the US (as in you reminded me, not that I'm directing this moan at you) - the way so much gets brushed under the carpet so the sanitized story remains intact, and the way it's regurgitated so frequently; the colonists fled religious persecution, George III was a terrible man, The War of 1812 was both a British invasion and a US victory, etc. At every turn the 'Americans' are the victims, which in a story that includes genocide and slavery is quite a stretch of the imagination.

The most annoying bit is how often an entire world view is then extrapolated from this one mythologized event; if America = free then Britain must then have been tyranny. No mention American slavery. No mention (or knowledge) of the English Bill of Rights. Everything is so binary and it's everywhere to be seen - document greeting new permanent residents, questions to gain your citizenship. It's why anytime the British government talks about new tests for new British citizens I dread to think what they'll add, what 'facts' become the official history.

As others have pointed out, American 'freedom' is not unique - and in many cases even lagged behind the rest of the world. It would be interesting to see if Obama would make such a claim after a second election win - my guess (or just blind hope) is that he knows better and it's a bit of 2008 electioneering in play there.

On a final note, I think the comparison with certain quarter of the UK is fair - I'd hate to be a German in England when a Germany-England World Cup game is on with all the inevitable WWII rhetoric. (That said, being English when a Germany-England game isn't much fun either when getting knocked out on penalties is your best hope.)

dlake02

Codswallop. America is by NO means "exceptional" in this regard. Many countries have had attempts at freedoms of various types over the milenia with government of the people by the people (that is DEMOCRACY from Greece ~400BC, not America).

And I'm not so sure that America is multi-ethnic with free-rights and free-speech for all. What I see is a highly ghettoised country, still obsessed with out-dated and out-moded concepts of colour and religion that simply no longer exist for the most part in Western Europe - America is stuck at about 1957, socially. Multi-ethnic, yes. Multi-cultural and integrated ? Not that much....

I also see huge mis-use of the "freedom" aspects by individuals that are just being provocative. You will hear Religious Nutter A or Political Idiot B come up with some utter tripe, and rather than the cry of "what a wally - STFU" all sides will leap to defend his/her freedom of speech without thinking about the damage that allowing such extreme views to be aired without challenge does to the fabric of society. Look at the (lack of) debate on gun control following weeks and weeks (years and years ?) of massacres, shootings, etc, etc. In every other other western country that has had massacres or outbursts of violent gun crime, there has been immediate public debate and the understanding that to create and maintain a harmonious society, individual "liberties" may need to be controlled.

Frankly, America is missing society - a sharing of common social goals and objectives. It is a very loose collection of individuals that all want what they want and they want it now. In a true society, the needs and wants of the individual need to be tempered for the good of the whole. Democracy is the means by which you subjugate control to a third-party that is elected to manage those temperances in order to maintain the rule of law.

It reminds me of Nursery School - you constantly have to stick your head round the door and say "Play nicely, children; remember to SHARE" and I don't see strong political leadership willing to do the same to the American public.

dlake02

Yeah - that must be a real bugger for Elisabeth of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.

But not half-as-bad as when her son comes along, that is:

Charles of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg

gradboy

I suppose one thing that slightly gets on my tits is the extent to which people overlook the fact that the US is, by most standards, an empire. I'm not talking about overseas colonies, but the American west.

Between Kansas and Nevada, up to Oregon, what do you have? A vast, sparsely populated land, ruled from afar, where the native population has been killed, moved, or subjugated, and a new population moved in. It's really no different than the British in Australia, or the Russians in Siberia.

Sally Redux

Don't know if I'm the only one to find "Leader of the Free World" an annoying title.

SultanOfSwing

You're not.

I find it to be positively dripping with irony, myself.

gradboy

It made sense up until the early 1990s, I think.

SultanOfSwing

It never made sense.

gradboy

I disagree, though it was always a bit blustery. When you could pretty neatly divide the world up into the democratic rich countries vs the socialist rich countries (plus the 3rd world), it was not a stretch to call the democratic rich countries the 'free world'. And like it or not, the US was the acknowledged leader of that group, at least in international relations.

SultanOfSwing

Thank God it was all so black and white ...

Personally I think it was more a case of the US being the only one with their hand up, while the UK, Germany and France were all out the back having a smoke.

Dear Lord, we're paying for that now.