4 ms·
India despite flaws is a democracy same as the US. It's a very different country then China. Plenty of immigrants from tyrannical countries are as if not more c
by rat87 2y ago
India despite flaws is a democracy same as the US. It's a very different country then China. Plenty of immigrants from tyrannical countries are as if not more committed to democracy as those born here
And just because someone was born in China or India it doesn't make them any less American then someone born in Iowa. Their children might be born in Iowa
- rayiner 2y agoDemocracy isn't created by intentions or "commitment," but rather the culture of the people, their attitudes, and mental processes. An Iowan born in Iowa to Iowan parents who were born to Iowan parents is steeped from birth in a culture that is very different from someone born in India or China--or even the American-born children of Indians and Chinese immigrants. Immigrants may become legally American overnight, but they don't become culturally American overnight. Cultural attitudes are extrmely durable (https://www.sup.org/books/economics-and-finance/culture-transplant https://www.sup.org/books/economics-and-finance/culture-tran...). My mom has lived here for 36 years, and she's still a low-social-trust south asian who has distinctly south asian views on credentialism, education, social hierarchy, etc. Are those attitudes compatible with the kind of egalitarian, self-governed democracy Alexis de Tocqueville wrote about? I am skeptical that's true at scale. Even having grown up here, my cultural attitudes are very different--and again, distinctly south asian--compared to my wife's (whose family has been here since the early 1700s). If you took 1,000 people like my wife and put them on an island, you'd recreate America--including the parts of America I find perplexing and frustrating. I'm not persuaded that if you took 1,000 people like me and put them on an island you'd recreate America.
- ryandamm 2y agoI think America in its best expression is an amalgamation of many different backgrounds and attitudes. Even differing opinions on the functioning of democracy, though I personally think some opinions denigrating democracy are a bit out of bounds and "unamerican" -- though that's obviously a "no true Scotsman" argument, I'm sticking to it. I guess I'm just arguing for a more expansive view of what constitutes an American. If it was some precious fragile thing that gets diluted by immigration and threatened by cultural mixing and new ideas, well... Oh... darnit.
- rayiner 2y ago> I think America in its best expression is an amalgamation of many different backgrounds and attitudes. In my view, the best expression of America is somewhere like Iowa--a flat society with intense, local self-governance. In every multicultural society, the democratic rapport that people have with each other ends up being replaced with relationships mediated by an increasingly large and bureaucratic government that can reconcile the conflicting cultures and interests. Democracy is reduced to mere voting.
- dctoedt 2y ago> In my view, the best expression of America is somewhere like Iowa--a flat society with intense, local self-governance. You sound very Jeffersonian, but methinks you're idealizing Iowa — have you ever spent time there? Anecdata: My dad's family is from Iowa — his people were small-holding farmers and village shopkeepers whose immigrant ancestors had come to Iowa from Germany. My dad and his siblings each left the state as soon as they reached adulthood and never once returned to live. Neither I, nor any of my siblings, nor any of our first cousins have ever lived there, nor have many of our second cousins (although we used to go back regularly to visit relatives). Feel free to conjecture why that might be.
- cuteboy19 2y agoafter jan6 we can pretty much put all asian democracies (minus pakistan) above the US in terms of democracy. SK recently had a similar coup-lite situation, not tolerated there. accepting loss is a core tenet of democracy
- matwood 2y ago“Americans have had democracy for so long they now take it for granted.” - an EU friend of mine. The peaceful transfer of power is not common in human history. It’s a miracle it’s gone on as long as it has in the US.
- deserts 2y agoThe book you cite and more generally the arguments traced in the Deep Roots literature are not very strong and often deployed to support anti-immigrant, anti-assimiliationist views. I'm not persuaded we could recreate America even if we took any 1000 people, even people who can trace their apple pie eating back to the Mayflower, because you know, America is a country and more generally complex arrangement of stuff that involves and entangles hundreds of millions of people (if not the entire planet).
- rayiner 2y ago> often deployed to support anti-immigrant, anti-assimiliationist views. So what? Immigration is optional. The people supporting large-scale migration from countries without functional democracies should have the burden of proving that cultural attitudes salient to democracy are not durable. Even in the U.S., I'm not persuaded that the Anglo-American republic as originally conceived survived the mass immigration of continental Europeans in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. > 'm not persuaded we could recreate America even if we took any 1000 people, We have a real-world experiment of this! America, Canada, and Australia are all oddly similar countries, demonstrating strong alignments along many dimensions.
- rat87 2y agoImmigration is core to American identity and America's success. It's one of our core defining values The American that was originally convinced was imperfect and much worse then the America we have today. We literally had slavery and most adults couldn't vote.
- rayiner 2y agoFind my anywhere in the federalist papers (or the anti-federalist papers) that says anything about immigration. What you’re talking about is a 20th century creation. We never tried to be an “immigrant nation”—we were a big open country with no welfare state, and it was favorable for us to allow extensive immigration to populate the continent and displace the native americans. In the 20th century we accidentally found ourselves with British Americans being a minority then created this idea of an “immigrant nation” to assimilate all the Germans, Italians, etc. But it’s a retcon.
- Dracophoenix 2y ago> If you took 1,000 people like my wife and put them on an island, you'd recreate America--including the parts of America I find perplexing and frustrating. I'm not persuaded that if you took 1,000 people like me and put them on an island you'd recreate America. That depends on the constituents of your sample. I doubt a city girl from New York and a farm boy from East Tennessee would have the same approach to life in this hypothetical thousand-person colony. They'll likely work and trade together as needed, but they would otherwise form and primarily associate with their own sociopolitical milieu, thus forming cultural enclaves. In short, I don't think you could really create another USA without the historical happenstances, upheavals, and transformations that changed country from a collection of colonies primarily divided on religious grounds to a unified secular republic.
- Parae 2y agoTocqueville was a colonialist who wanted to apply a racial segregation system in Algeria. He also wanted to indemnify slave-owners and traders if the slave went free. In France, we see Tocqueville as an "egalitarian but for the bourgeoisie". That's what the French Revolution was about : abolishing nobility so nobles and bourgeois are equals.
- 1659447091 2y agoI believe your personal experience may be narrowing your view. I have a similar family experience with drastically different outcome. Including ties to your idealize Iowan people (born to Iowan w/ Iowan grandparents, great grand parents and so on back to Jamestown for a couple), who are simply that, just people. Most Iowans come from late 1800 immigrants, many from East Europe. Some of my Iowan family lines are outliers in terms of origin (first families), but there is at least one from 1800 East Europe that I know of. If you moved on from British history to American History, you would better understand the real mixing of immigrants/cultures, and that is distinctly American. They did not all stick to their kind, as it were. Some recent family has integrated with Asian immigrants and they are more "American" than some of my Iowan families in-laws that have been radicalized into anti-American values, much to my Iowan families horror. That has nothing to do with "cultural attitudes" etc, and everything to do with living in internet bubbles. Iowan's I know and come from are blue through and through--Union loving gun toting Democrats. Most of them have kept their values, some have let Fox "news" take that thinking over for them.
- dredmorbius 2y agoI'm not persuaded that if you took 1,000 people like me and put them on an island you'd recreate America.' A rare moment of strong agreement.
- hayst4ck 2y agoHow does one commit themselves to democracy?