Quote:
Originally Posted by Xenophon
Interesting that no one has yet commented on RSE's government as referee observation. He's absolutely nailed an important part of the American attitude towards government, IMHO. Another part of the American attitude on government -- that permeates the writings of our Founding Fathers, by the way -- is that government is a necessary evil. We need it both to secure "certain inalienable rights" (to quote one of those FFs) and also to be the hopefully-impartial-referee that RSE described. But there's a strong strain of American thought that views government beyond a certain minimum level as a problem, not a solution. (I would argue that this meme is not nearly strong enough in contemporary America. Your mileage may vary.) I suspect that most of our European members don't see things that way. Am I right?
Xenophon
(Who was radicalized by extensive readings from the FFs during high-school. Those guys were fire-eating revolutionaries! We tend to forget that these days...)
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I hope this don't trigger our European brethren, but Europe never had a frontier to develope the ethos. There has always been somebody on top running things. So culturally, it's always been a battle for who's on top, and the position relative to each other in the power structure is the main point. The more you deny the people below you, the less resources/abilities they have to supplant you. It should be no suprise that literacy and education was not a high prioirty to be given to peasants. They might become competitors.