Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
The attitude that "the government is my enemy and is trying to harm me" does seem to be a uniquely American perspective (not one, I know, which all Americans share!). I've often seen it expressed by Americans, but never by a European. We may not always agree with what our governments do, but I don't think that any of us actually believe that our government is actively trying to harm us.
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It comes back to cultural formation. For the last 1000 years there has always been a government controlling things in Europe. Therefore the culture is molded into one that believes in government controlling things. The US has a different cultural perspective, because it was built on a different cultural perspective, i. e. you took care of youself, because there wasn't anyone else to take care of you, as there wasn't anybody else around. (and many people
liked it that way!)
Because of the different cultural formation, you get different perspectives. In Europe, Liberty is something a government grants, from it's absolute powers, as it see fit. It has the
right to do anything, without limit. It's limits are set by the government in power at any particular time, not by any inherent cultural limit. This goes back to feudalistic government types.
The US
has no feudalistic background, it's background is surviving an anarchic frontier with harsh weather and harsher existing dwellers. People who survived and thrived in such evironments, don't need to be granted choices from an all-powerful government form, they grant powers
to a not-all-powerful government form. And they withhold the rights to grant powers when they see fit. Government is a
hired hand in the American form, government is a
boss in the European form.
Is this a strict US form? It would be interesting to see and Austrailian weigh in on their view of government...