Why is the US so conservative?

[Gustaf]

It's a country founded on what you may call conservative ideas. I'm guessing that's really much of the explanation.

I also think it has something to do with how US society was created and even more with how Americans have idealized that process.

[Gustaf]

What really befuddles me isn't so much the fiscal conservatism of the US, it's the saliency of social/cultural matters and the continuous struggle over them.

Here in Greece, arguably the most socially conservative of European western democracies, abortion was legalized thirty years ago with little fuss, after being accepted practice for much longer, and nobody has ever talked about it again.
Gay people were never targeted for ridicule and condemnation by our (powerful) Orthodox church and its conservative political allies.
And while anti-immigrant sentiment is on the rise due to our economic hardships, there is nowhere near the venom and hate of people like Tom Tancredo and Steve King.  

Ever heard of Le Pen, Bossi, Haider, Kjaersgaard, etc, etc?

Immigration and racism is one subject where Europe can't really claim to be much better than the US. If we had anything like the US-Mexican border I think racism would be a lot worse than it already is...

If one were to over-generalize in a ridiculous fashion one could say that anyone in Europe who cared about religio nwas born again in the nineteenth century and had to flee to the US. Ergo...

[Gustaf]

Part of it - perhaps waning now - is that our ethnic diversity deflects to some extent what would otherwise be perhaps more class based voting. And of course for a developed nation, the US is off the charts when it comes to to the percentage of its population for which matters of faith are an important aspect of their lives.  On the regression analysis line, most of the nations are dots that are not far from the line created by per capita income on one axis and religious intensity on the other, while the US is up in the corner of the chart just miles and miles away from the line.

Anyway, that is my theory. Some might think it has more to do with the indulgence of the fantasy of American exceptionalism, but I don't really subscribe to that one myself.

As I alluded to above I think perceptions of class are very different in the US - at least partly for good reason.

[Gustaf]

What really befuddles me isn't so much the fiscal conservatism of the US, it's the saliency of social/cultural matters and the continuous struggle over them.

Here in Greece, arguably the most socially conservative of European western democracies, abortion was legalized thirty years ago with little fuss, after being accepted practice for much longer, and nobody has ever talked about it again.
Gay people were never targeted for ridicule and condemnation by our (powerful) Orthodox church and its conservative political allies.
And while anti-immigrant sentiment is on the rise due to our economic hardships, there is nowhere near the venom and hate of people like Tom Tancredo and Steve King.  

Ever heard of Le Pen, Bossi, Haider, Kjaersgaard, etc, etc?

Immigration and racism is one subject where Europe can't really claim to be much better than the US. If we had anything like the US-Mexican border I think racism would be a lot worse than it already is...

If one were to over-generalize in a ridiculous fashion one could say that anyone in Europe who cared about religio nwas born again in the nineteenth century and had to flee to the US. Ergo...

Yeah, thanks about the condescension.

We have the equivalent of the Mexican-American border: it's called the Aegean. And yet until the last couple of years, incidents of xenophobia were very few and far between here. So perhaps it's time for you to stop the overgeneralizations.

No need to be so testy. I wasn't implying that you didn't know that those people existed, I was pointing at them as examples of a pattern.

There is a vast difference between a sea border and a land border. I doubt the share of (Turks, Egyptians?) is the same in Greece as the share of Hispanics in New Mexico or Arizona, but I could be wrong.

Regardless, that might mean that Greece is great when it comes to immigration issues (I'll confess that I'm no expert on that subject) but the general pattern in Europe is certainly not one of tolerance. Especially if we include Eastern Europe in the analysis.

[Gustaf]

It's a country founded on what you may call conservative ideas. I'm guessing that's really much of the explanation.

I also think it has something to do with how US society was created and even more with how Americans have idealized that process.

But the US were far less conservative until the 1980s (or even the 1990s). While that's true to some extent for most of developed countries, in USA this shift has taken epic proportions.

That really depends on how you define conservative. Certain extremely stupid left-winged policies have been removed and certain, rather disgusting, leftist ideological positions have been largely abandoned.

Overall, I'm not convinced you can say that the world is epically more conservative today than it was 30 years ago.

Perhaps I should clarify that I think the different roots I'm referring to might have taken effect rather late, like now.

[Gustaf]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't a rather unpleasant far-right party hold 15 seats in the Greek parliament?

When I said I didn't know much about Greek politics, I'd forgot about that guy. I have heard of him.

Some charming quotes from the leader of the 4th biggest party in Greece:

"Hitler was a mere college-boy compared to the Jews".

"The New World Order means that we are a puppet at the hands of the Jews. Razing. Protocols of Zion. The Global government has taken place in Europe. The common currency too. They are dancing it to their tune. Do you know what kind of money the Jews are profiteering with these ups and downs? We are being led to the fulfilment of targets set 200 years ago."

In 2001, Karatzaferis stated that "the Jews have no right to provoke, because they have filled the world with crimes". "The Jews have no legitimacy to speak in Greece and provoke the political world. Their impudence is crass". In the same tirade, Karatzaferis challenged the Israeli ambassador to come and debate "the Holocaust, the Auschwitz and Dahau myth". Karatzaferis finished by asking "mister Jew ambassador" to "be a bit careful" and warning "the Jews" that if they continued their "insolent behaviour" they were "not going to have a pleasant time". The "insolent behaviour" in question was the Greek Jewish community's response to Karatzaferis's earlier claims that "the Jews" were responsible for 9/11.

Clearly, there is no racism in Greece. At least not at the level of the US...

[Gustaf]

And the guy described as their leading candidate in the 2004 elections by Wikipedia goes even further:

In the book, Plevris describes himself as a "Nazi, fascist, racist, anti-democrat, anti-Semite" (p. 600), subscribes to the myth of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (which he presents as authentic and valid evidence against the Jews), characterizes Jewish children in the concentration camps as "very fat" and "well-fed", claims that Jews are "subhuman" (p. 583) "mortal enemies", and criticizes the Nazis for "not ridding Europe of Jewish Zionism". In the same book, he characterizes former UN secretary Kofi Annan as "cannibal" and "descendant of cannibals" and states that Jews need to be "rounded-up and executed within 24 hours", which is "the only way they understand" (p. 742).

He has apparently also written a "vehement polemic against homosexuals".

Even though I'm aware of it I'm always surprised by the level of racism that exists in Europe.

[Gustaf]

To be fair to Greece, LAOS would stand no chance in a "conservative voters" primary, either. There's a reason their leader was kicked out of New Democracy back in the 90s. I think their approximately 5% of the vote nationally is not an unreasonable estimate of what they'd get in the US on a proportional system. (After all, their platform isn't mostly about Jews, even though their leader occasionally goes on anti-Semitic rants--and it would probably be modified to be anti-black or anti-Hispanic or anti-Muslim ranting if it were in the US.)

Meh, good point.
I could see a viruently anti-Hispanic party get 10% of the vote in the States.  After all, this is the same country that had the Know Nothing Movement.  And unlike slavery it really hasn't gone away in parts of the country.  Hell we got politicians pushing forth a repeal of birth right citizenship.  Nativism is a pretty ugly beast.

I don't think there is any comparable anti-Hispanic figure to Hitler...but if someone literally wanted to execute all Hispanics because they're subhuman...I sort of doubt that could get 10% (or even 5%) in the US. If we're talking about "throwing out the darkies becaues they're stealing the jobs and committing crimes (not that I'm racist or anything)" that position regularly gets 10-25% in most European countries.

[Gustaf]

Hitler didn't campaign on exterminating the Jews in the genocidal sense beause they didn't decide to do that until well after they stopped having elections. He did however campaign on an anti-Jewish platform that goes beyond what I heard from any politicians in the US on Hispanics, for example.