Unrealpolitik

[imomus]

On 11th August Science magazine, under the low-key heading "Public Acceptance of Evolution", published research by Jon D. Miller, Eugenie C. Scott and Shinji Okamoto which showed that only 14% of adult Americans think the theory of evolution is "definitely true" (around 40% give more qualified consent to the idea). In Europe and Japan, in contrast, around 80% of the adult population believes that human beings developed from earlier species of animals. (There's a more accurate graph than the New York Times one I've used here.)

In the days that followed, the story got picked up by National Geographic Magazine ("Evolution Less Accepted in U.S. Than Other Western Countries, Study Finds") and the New York Times ("Did humans evolve? Not us, say Americans") before spreading waves of amusement, despair and disbelief through the blogosphere ("Americans not developed from earlier species of animals").

The researchers, who found that American anti-Darwinism is growing quite quickly (from 7% of skeptics to 21% in the past 20 years), blamed "widespread fundamentalism and the politicization of science in the United States" for the difference between the US and Europe and Japan. But by most measures the US differs quite radically from other advanced nations. Back in the early 90s Bantam Books published "Where We Stand", a comparison of the US with other wealthy nations. In table after table, the US ranked either at the top or the bottom, revealing its fundamental difference from European nations. Here's a brief summary (based on this page) of the factors on which the US was either the lowest or highest ranking (it's probable that most of these differences have only become more extreme in the intervening 15 years). The US has the:

Lowest overall tax rates as a percentage of GNP
Highest purchasing power
Highest individual worker productivity (but in both cases, other nations have been catching up)
Highest percentage of families earning two paychecks
Highest average household debt (double next nearest, UK)
Lowest average household savings
Biggest trade deficit
Biggest current account imbalance
Lowest investment levels as a percentage of GDP
Highest inequality of income (Gini)
Highest disparity between CEOs' pay and other workers' pay
Lowest percentage of unionized workers
Smallest middle class
Highest percentage of people below the poverty level
Highest percentage of below-poverty-level children
Most deaths from malnutrition per million
Highest healthcare expenditure as percentage of GDP
Highest doctor's incomes
Lowest percentage of population covered by public health care
Highest infant mortality rate
Highest toddler death rates
Highest rate of death in 15-24 year olds
Highest premature death rate
Highest number of people who think healthcare system needs fundamental change
Highest percentage of single-parent families
Lowest percentage of girls who are still virgins aged 20
Lowest percentage of sexually active single 15 to 19-year olds using birth control
Highest teen pregnancy rates
Highest teen abortion rates
Highest rates of reported police brutality
Biggest percentage of its population in prison
Largest number of death row inmates
Largest percentage of houses with a handgun
Largest number of handgun murders
Highest murder rate
Highest rape rate
Highest armed robbery rate
Lowest percentage of people using public transport
Highest annual air miles per person
Lowest average price of gallon of gas
Most oil energy used
Most carbon dioxide per person released
Most carbon monoxide per person released
Most CFCs emitted
Most major oil spills
Most forests cleared
Most coal burned
Most debris inhaled per person per year
Most municipal waste produced per person
Least glass recycled
Least paper and cardboard recycled
Shortest paid vacations
Least news as percentage of all TV
Most manufacturing employee turnover
Most employees fired
Lowest voter participation levels
Lowest number of referenda (zero)
Largest number of political scandals

A more up-to-date account of fundamental differences between the US and Europe appears in The Economist magazine. In an August 3rd story headed "To Israel With Love", the magazine reports a gulf between American and European perceptions of the current war in the Middle East.

"A USA Today/Gallup poll conducted on July 28th-30th," the Economist says, "showed that eight in ten Americans believed that Israel's action [in Lebanon] was justified... Americans are far more likely than Europeans to side with Israel in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A Pew Global Attitudes survey taken between March and May found that 48% of Americans said that their sympathies lay with the Israelis; only 13% were sympathetic towards the Palestinians. By contrast, in Spain for example, 9% sympathised with the Israelis and 32% with the Palestinians."

This, says the magazine, is because Americans have strong cultural affinities with Israel; the average American is much more likely to find something in common with the attitudes of Israelis than the attitudes of Europeans:

"Americans are staunch nationalists, much readier to contemplate the use of force than Europeans. A German Marshall Fund survey in 2005 found 42% of Americans strongly agreeing that “under some conditions, war is necessary to obtain justice” compared with just 11% of Europeans. A Pew survey found that the same proportion of Americans and Israelis believe in the use of pre-emptive force: 66%. Continental European figures were far lower."

The article points to the power of the AIPAC (Israeli) and Christian fundamentalist lobbies on the American political system, and says:

"The Christian right is also solidly behind Israel. White evangelicals are significantly more pro-Israeli than Americans in general; more than half of them say they strongly sympathise with Israel. (A third of the Americans who claim sympathy with Israel say that this stems from their religious beliefs.) Two in five Americans believe that Israel was given to the Jewish people by God, and one in three say that the creation of the state of Israel was a step towards the Second Coming."

Which brings us back to the refusal to believe in Darwinian evolution. Isn't there something tremendously dangerous in this combination of stubborn irrationality and tremendous geo-political power? Unrealpolitik, we could call it.

Comments

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Interesting.

America is greatly culturally different from Europe (and typically more "right-wing").

Yes. I don't often spell it out, but it's glaringly obvious. The US and Israel are extremely right wing in the sense in which I'd understand the term. (I see you put it in scare quotes!) But what's interesting is that people who defend the US and Israel don't often want to say they're right wing. They use leftish arguments to justify "the democratization of the Middle East" or "the spread of universal human rights", and they tell me I'm right wing on cultural issues, for instance my defense of traditional societies.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I see one of the Amazon reviewers (http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0141015365/202-9747386-1555016?v=glance&n=266239) of The Right Nation says of the authors: "Their point of view is that of moderate conservatives who like America but find some aspects of American conservatism a bit strange."

[kineticfactory.livejournal.com]

Moderate conservatives or moderate "liberals".

[kineticfactory.livejournal.com]

Well, "right-wing" and "left-wing" are, unless one is talking about the French Revolutionary assembly, largely dependent on context. By themselves they mean so many different things that they have little precise meaning. (Would any two "right-wingers", or "left-wingers", necessarily share a position?) A lot of points of view combine elements which are "right-wing" and "left-wing", and can look like either, depending on which ones one emphasises (and which angle one sees them from). The fact that these labels are often applied as a sort of form letter for dismissing a point of view one disagrees with makes them also less useful as an analytical tool.

It's me butting in again

[ex-newironsh15.livejournal.com]

Whoa, I was just thinking that. The bit about the seating arrangements in the French assembly.

I like the system proposed by political compass (http://www.politicalcompass.org/index) and other sites, it's more descriptive.

Re: It's me butting in again

[kineticfactory.livejournal.com]

Isn't the Political Compass a propaganda tool to convince people that, deep down, they're Libertarians like all other decent human beings?

Re: It's me butting in again

[ex-newironsh15.livejournal.com]

Beats me. If anything, it convinced me I'm something of an authoritarian (both economically and socially).

There's one on okcupid.com that puts you next to funny pictures of world figures. I got Gorbachev.

Re: It's me butting in again

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Wow, it's pretty weird that the BNP is on the left of that plan and all the mainstream UK parties on the right! Alice in Wonderland!

Another problem with the Political Compass is that it has no dimension for cultural intervention. I believe in leaving other cultures be and respecting their difference, Hitler, Blair and Bush believe in intervention. Am I to the right of Hitler or is he to the right of me on that intervention / non-intervention dimension?

Re: It's me butting in again

[ex-newironsh15.livejournal.com]

Tilt it to the right 45 degrees for the standard left-right continuum.

"The difference between the BNP and the Greens in economics isn't great, but there's a huge gap on the social scale. Neither scale, however, reveals enormous distances between the Conservatives and New Labour."

I'd suppose cultural relativism would be measured on the "social" scale. But yeah, that's one point where it breaks down. Because, as you've stated, you've defended traditional society.

Eventually all these graphic models break down at some point, whether it's one dimension or two.

Re: It's me butting in again

[georgesdelatour.livejournal.com]

Old-fashioned patrician Tories like Max Hastings and Simon Jenkins tend to agree with you. Both defended Douglas Hurd's initial refusal to intervene to stop the killing of Bosnian Muslims on exactly your grounds. Their distain for George Bush is based largely on snobbery, and they think the Iraq war was doomed to failure because the fuzzie-wuzzzies are not like us, and will always need a strong man like Saddam to knock their heads together. They've both moved from the Telegraph and the Times to the Guardian without changing their opinions.

Re: It's me butting in again

[(Anonymous)]

Since the main question here is creationism/faith/antiscience versus science/reason/progress, this diagram is very unhelpful. Many greens, believing in conservation, are naturally conservative (as David Cameron is arguing). They tend to be at best dubious about progress and science. Sometimes their environmentalism is based on a mystical, spiritual view of life. Oh, and where does the Respect party fit in?

Re: It's me butting in again

[ex-newironsh15.livejournal.com]

The diagram is only slightly more useful than "right" "center" and "left" used outside the original context.

If anything these models highlight the difference between facts and values.

Science-as-government could very well lead to a sort of soulless utilitarianism, with decisions based on killing the least number of people, or an amount of people with the less total monetary value attached to them. This might seem like a familiar theme...

We tend to overlook that within "conservatism" there's an alliance between the church (values) and business (facts).