Nathan:
> No, on immigration issues, Bush is probably to the "left" of most
European
> social democratic parties, who wouldn't be caught dead talking as
> rapturously about multiculturalism as Bush does. And that fact
attests to
> the successes of the left in the US on racial justice issues compared
to
> Europe, who may provide lovely health care to their traditionally
white
> citizenry, but are incredibly loathe to allow in new immigrants.
>
Europe's population density is greater than that of China and about ten times that of the US - so this is comparing apples and oranges. You need to control for the country's capacity to absorb immigrants to make a judgment about its immigration policy.
I am pretty sure that if the US had the population density similar to Europe - US-ers would be voluntarily patrolling the borders and shooting everyone trying to cross them, as some have already done in Texas.
Your subsequent arguments about hospitals turning in immigrants ant anti-corporate sentiments of US juries also miss the. These are the sentiments of populism, not left- or liberal leanings. US-ers are high on populism, but so were the Nazis (as nicely shown on the film _The Triumpf of the Will_). In the US-context, big corporations are often more progressive than the bulk of the population - take for example domestic partnership policies that give the same sex couples access to benefits - many big corporations implemented them even though the bulk of the population is against them.
I am not denying that there are very progressive elements in the US society - but these are relatively small and fragmented, concentrating mainly in the large coastal cities (Boston, New York, Washington DC, Sand Francisco) and on college campuses. Outside these areas - there is a different story, one nicely captured by HL. Mencken in is account of the Scopes trial (see below). I think his account still holds for most of the US outside the said urban centers.
You are certainly rights that the strength of capital was one of the contributing factor to US conservatism - but the immigrant nature and fragmentation of the US society is another one, perhaps even more powerful.
Wojtek
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/scopes/menk.htm "Today, with the curtain barely rung up and the worst buffooneries to come, it is obvious to even town boomers that getting upon the map, like patriotism, is not enough. The getting there must be managed discreetly, adroitly, with careful regard to psychological niceties. The boomers of Dayton, alas, had no skill at such things, and the experts they called in were all quacks. The result now turns the communal liver to water. Two months ago the town was obscure and happy. Today it is a universal joke.
I have been attending the permanent town meeting that goes on in Robinson's drug store, trying to find out what the town optimists have saved from the wreck. All I can find is a sort of mystical confidence that God will somehow come to the rescue to reward His old and faithful partisans as they deserve--that good will flow eventually out of what now seems to be heavily evil. More specifically, it is believed that settlers will be attracted to the town as to some refuge from the atheism of the great urban Sodoms and Gomorrah.
But will these refugees bring any money with them? Will they buy lots and build houses? Will they light the fires of the cold and silent blast furnace down the railroad tracks? On these points, I regret to report, optimism has to call in theology to aid it. Prayer can accomplish a lot. It can cure diabetes, find lost pocketbooks and retain husbands from beating their wives. But is prayer made any more officious by giving a circus first? Coming to this thought, Dayton begins to sweat. "
" In brief this is a strictly Christian community, and such is its notion of fairness, justice and due process of law. Try to picture a town made up wholly of Dr. Crabbes and Dr. Kellys, and you will have a reasonably accurate image of it. Its people are simply unable to imagine a man who rejects the literal authority of the Bible. The most they can conjure up, straining until they are red in the face, is a man who is in error about the meaning of this or that text. Thus one accused of heresy among them is like one accused of boiling his grandmother to make soap in Maryland"
"The Scopes trial, from the start, has been carried on in a manner exactly fitted to the anti- evolution law and the simian imbecility under it. There hasn't been the slightest pretense to decorum. The rustic judge, a candidate for re-election, has postured the yokels like a clown in a ten-cent side show, and almost every word he has uttered has been an undisguised appeal to their prejudices and superstitions. The chief prosecuting attorney, beginning like a competent lawyer and a man of self-respect, ended like a convert at a Billy Sunday revival. It fell to him, finally, to make a clear and astounding statement of theory of justice prevailing under fundamentalism. What he said, in brief, was that a man accused of infidelity had no rights whatever under Tennessee law..."