Do American and European values differ?

Nearly four out of five Europeans asked in one poll said they thought Americans and Europeans have different values. Almost as many Americans agreed. But the Inglehart Values Map (see p.257 of Free World) shows a much more complex picture. Do you think we have different values? If so, what’s the biggest difference?  

Debate - Page 13/13

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Steven C., Southern Illinoise, US

The American mainstream media as well, as the international media, continues to reference the loss of America's "credibility". They note American military actions since 9-11 as the reason for this. But it's a crock.
With Bush (or any Hawkish Conservative) as the President of the USA, who is willing to use force on our enemies, America has tremendous credibility. We now have the fear of our enemies. They now know that if they push us far enough, they'll pay. We'll depose their governments and kill them. If you think that doesn't give us credibility, then you don't know what credibility is.
Europe has little credibility because they are weak. If you murder Europeans, you need not fear retribution from their governments.
Credibility means your enemies fear you and your friends respect your strength. To the global media, credibility means you appease your enemies.

Steven C., Southern Illinoise, US

Mike in London: you got it all wrong.
The Democrats are anti-black. They were the slaveholders before our civil war. The Republicans are pro-black. The Republicans launched the war to free the black slaves.
Since then, the democrats have "re-enslaved" American blacks with entitlements and generational, government sponsored poverty. The republicans continue their efforts to liberate blacks from their new, government bondage. The progress is slow but steady.

Fernandez Thierry, Canada

Kara what ... karasick ... a serbian or an American ?
For your information , we have lost 3 Fernandez in 9/11 .
Spend yours dollars in Serbia Mr. Karasic , with yours brothers?
Thierry Fernandez .Canada. French speaker.

Ross Gurung, France

Is this dichotomy exceedingly simplistic to have all this straightforward nature of storytelling, the relation of fact to imagination, reality to illusion? I do not mean to make a quizzical disparaging about something which overrides effectively all my predictions. Let me do the press review.
It came to me that I have not to hold sway over the current world events that ran as fast as anything, leaving behind a bitter taste of unseemly glee. The recent apocalyptic vision of New Orleans is for me very much in line with Tsunami, Apocalypse now and what is happening all over the world for some time.
In a way, will the Pakistani military forces help the Allied forces to catch Bin Laden in the hostile area of Pachtunistan, or will they again not go up to the end to nab him 'cause of the fear of not receiving anymore military US aid afterwards?
Would France and Dutch 'Noes' in recent referendum mark a watershed or a turning point? What's about Germany not sharing the booty between Merkel and Schroeder? Does Reagan spring out of his sleep to make a revolution in the european continent? Anyway, it is not just around the corner.
I hear a former spin doctor Lance Price is trying to drive TB into a corner. This bugger appears to be a nonentity, by introducing almost for the first time in Europe such mega distrust with regard to politics. In Europe too, are we going to have the same kind of over judicial and harassing society just as it is happening on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean?
Talking about the tycoon Rupert Murdoch makes me lose my cool 'cause one day this fellow will do more harm to the human race than the plague did in the middle ages by formatting his clones when his grip on the News Media in the five continents will be total. At present the USA appears to be almost under Murdoch's regime. Almost 2/3 of british press and televisions are getting under the influence of Murdoch. Some say TB is Murdoch's stooge. What's up with him?
Now I understand what a TV proprietor in France in recent get-together wanted to defer to our knowledge; "I project the films on television to prepare the minds of the spectators to receive the message of publicity without contest so that they could become the future docile consumers."
I've a question that I'm wondering as to which of the two should be the centre of the future of mankind, either human beings or the world finance and economics.

Phil Karasick, Seattle, Washington, USA

Fernandez Thierry in Canada wrote: "Kara what ... karasick ... a serbian or an American?"
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I'm American, thanks. Half-Canuck, actually. My late mother was from Vancouver. I think my great-great grandfather came from Kiev. My surname is originally Ukranian, I think. Not Serbian.
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Fernandez Thierry in Canada wrote: "For your information, we have lost 3 Fernandez in 9/11."
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Please accept my condolences. We lost about 3,000 people on 9/11.
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Fernandez Thierry in Canada wrote: "Spend yours dollars in Serbia Mr. Karasic, with yours brothers?"
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Well, no. Like I said, I'm not Serbian, and I don't have any brothers, Serbian or otherwise. And I have no desire to go to Serbia. But I might occasionally take a trip north and spend my dollars in Vancouver, BC.

Steve Edwards, USA

EURO-HATERS WHO CONTINUALLY ATTACK AMERICA IN THE MEDIA RANGING FROM THE GLOATING BBC TO THE FRENCH NEWSPAPERS HAVE SUCCEEDED IN MAKING MANY AMERICANS BACK INTO ISOLATIONISTS.
AMERICA HAS SAVED EUROPE FROM THE KAISER, HITLER, AND THE COMMUNISTS.
NO COUNTRY IS HATED MORE THAN THE FRENCH - WHO WERE COLLABORATORS IN WWII, AND HAVE NOW ALLOWED TEN MILLION MOSLEMS INTO THEIR COUNTRY WHICH POSE A THREAT FOR THE WHOLE EU.
I AM AFRAID THAT THOSE LETTERS WRITERS WHO SAY THEY LOVE AMERICA ARE NOW TOO LITTTLE AND TOO LATE.EUROPE OWES AMERICA IN A BIG WAY - NOT ONLY FOR SAVING THEM THREE TIMES IN THE LAST CENTURY, BUT ALSO FOR THE MARSHALL PLAN AID.

EUROPE HAS NO CHARLES MARTEL, AND YOU "BATTLE OF CIVILIZATIONS" WITH THE SURGE OF ISLAMIC HAORDES ENTERING EUROPE PROVES THAT YOU HAVE LOST THE ABILITY TO FIGHT BACK.

alessandro, italy

even the european still have different then do not talk about the America... Who think this topic? so stupid

Ross Gurung, France

For want of anything better, how best could we substantiate the words; l‚Entente cordiale between the Brits and French across the Channel?
Under the current British presidency of the EU, Blair should and could impulse as well as inject a new mood and flavour into the EU by rendering it more attractive to the slumbering and so far lukewarm Europeans and thus making them really participate and believe in a better future of the EU.
The times we live in, it is claimed that agriculture is a thing of the past. And what‚s more, things are gradually taking different shapes. These days, the appropriate slogan is; Scram from oil scam! The rise of oil-price has given suddenly to our mostly urban societies the exact value of agriculture, making it a vital foregoing steward of the environment and giving it, at the same time, a top seeded role to play particularly with the advent of green chemistry, greenhouse effects and biofuels. The would be scarcity of energy product from the sources of fossil fuels gives agriculture a second chance to participate in the global management of the environment.
At the end of the latest EU budget discussions, a kind of bitter taste was persisting in amongst the participants. Amongst all those divisions, they concern, on top of all, the common agricultural policy(CAP) and british rebate. Were they simply the scapegoats?
As to the CAP, there are really very different points and conceptions. Let us seriously try to analyse them here below.
It is not without careful thought that we try to understand the difficulties of different Europeans to make match their respective interests regarding the CAP.
Setting aside the prejudice, if we want to engage in a serious debate, the first thing to do is to set out the real facts, not the selfish and partial considerations.
Above all, everybody says that the Cap is 42% of the EU budget, so why it is too expensive and squandering. To this effect, let us pinpoint the approximate growth of domestic product (GDP)/year of the four big contributing nations of the EU. The different annual GDPs are as follows: Germany 2232.0bn Euros, England 1770.6bn Euros, France 1684.0bn Euros and Italy 1379.4bn Euros. The contribution of 1% to the CAP of each one is supposed to be 22bn 320m, 17bn 706m, 16bn 840m and 13bn 794m Euros/year. Moreover, they vary in accordance with different yearly growth of each nation.
Taken together, the EU spends 42% from Brussels of the collective budget on agriculture (don‚t forget, it is the addition of 1% contribution of each 25 nations). To compare the budget for agriculture with those for the other sectors, we need to consolidate expenditure at the EU and national levels. It is quite evident that the EU and the member nations spend less than 1% of their whole collective budget on agriculture (nothing at national level Œcause it is strictly prohibited). According to my estimation, Lisbon objective of allocating 3% of the EU budget to research, the EU and its member nations together would spend about 785bn Euros on research compared with 305bn Euros for agriculture under the Luxembourg presidency‚s proposals over the period of 2009 to 2013.
If we talk as French, we‚d surely say that the CAP is the only integrated european policy. France being the largest area country to plough in Europe it received automatically more allocation compared with Germany, England, Italy and others. Furthermore, all this time, it allowed Europe to regain food self-sufficiency in staple foods and guarantee secure prices for farms, safety for consumers with the real traceability of meats, cereals, fruits and vegetables. Whereas, country like England where cultivating land is almost the half of France, received less allocation. But thanks to the european subsidiary policy, all English landlords could entertain so far a substantial allocation in accordance with the hectares of possession of their respective lands. For example, the Queen Elizabeth obtained 800,000 Euros/year, the Prince Charles 500,000 Euros/year etc. and so on.
We should not forget the importance of controlling food supplies even in time of peace. The CAP can manage any fear resulting from the natural calamities, if there are economic crisis in the South America, drought, flooding and an epidemic such as birds‚ flu, mad cow disease in any part of the globe.
The efforts of the EU in favour of developing countries after the first Lomé agreements of 1973 are quite significant. The EU alone imports more from the rest of the world than any other developed countries put together comprising the USA.
The CAP accounts for 0.4% of european GNP. But every European can benefit from it. No other economic sector can boast for something better.
On the other hand, the 4.5 bn Euros of rebate allocated to England, extensible according to the growth of the european collective budget, at the time of Thatcher administration was in order to provide an assistance to boost the then England‚s slack economics and to better up the infrastructures which were really lagging behind compared with the then West Germany and France. Now as England‚s economics are quite flourishing it is time that the same opportunity had been awarded to the new comers who required it the most. Blair would face rather a great difficulty to wear the suit of Thatcher.
To come to an end, Dennis McShane, the British former labour european minister makes us want to barf at his eyes for his repellent moonshine and smear campaign perpetuating against France, time and again moping about, by scribbling down horrors on the Newsweek pages to flatter the ego of his neocon American friends. British fair play has become a simple myth.
This is far less than the value of his support to the British politics towards the EU, but it is at least a practical expression of his declared -Tartufferie- as a proeuropean.
Finally, he discredits all the British european policies as well as the British political mandarins that really never want England to be in the EU (if not they‚d have already accepted the Euros) except eventually compelled by the economic stalemate or slump.
PS: Jack Straw, please do not serve turkey-cock in dinner on October 3, 2005. The reasons are:
Firstly, it is not fed with 'democracy' and not well cooked as yet.
Secondly, the Europeans are used to ducks (Red label, AOC etc.) so far. They are already scared of 'goosepimples' and it does not grab them to catch 'turkeybumps' anyway.
If you force your way thru' you'll have to eat the whole turkey-cock alone with your American friends on Thanksgiving.

Alice Lewis, English - living in Italy

Phil Karasick's criticisms of Billiot's "European illogic" is shocking. English is clearly not Mr Billiot's first language, yet he manifests a far stronger grasp of English grammar, spelling and usage in general than the foresaid Mr Karasick.

 

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Debate - Page 13/13