See "Table 7: Republican Identification By Income and Religion, Whites Only" on page 54 (McCarty, Poole, and Rosenthal, <http://www.cbrss.harvard.edu/events/encounters/papers/MPRchapter3.pdf>).
> >Here is a comparative poll that asked Americans and Europeans about
> >their trust and distrust in various institutions, and it turns out
> >Americans are no different than Europeans with regard to their trust
> >in the military and the police
>
>The European countries polled have small militaries, many of them
>staffed by draftees, that don't do all that much abroad. We have a
>large professional military that regularly bombs and invades other
>countries. The populations polled are respecting very different
>things.
The European armed forces have also become professional militaries, and they play complementary roles to the US military in policing the empire (e.g., the European militaries providing the main forces in Afghanistan and allowing the US military to get on with the invasion of Iraq):
<blockquote>Nicholas Burns, the U.S. ambassador to NATO, advised our European partners to get rid of their conscripts. Defense Department officials praised France and Italy for shifting to all-volunteer forces and applauded Germany's decision to trim its number of conscripts. Military leaders encouraged aspiring NATO members to put an end to compulsory service.
. . . Canada, Britain and Luxembourg also have a decades-long tradition of all-volunteer service. . . .
Since the mid-1990s, . . . Belgium, France, Hungary, the Netherlands,
Portugal and Spain have ended the draft. The Czech Republic, Italy,
Latvia, Romania, the Slovak Republic and Slovenia plan to phase it
out within the next several years. (Cindy Williams, "Draft Lessons
>From Europe,"
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7257-2004Oct4.html>,
October 5, 2004, p. A25)</blockquote>
>It's pretty hard to separate one's feelings about the military from
>"military culture." According to a May 2004 Gallup poll, here are
>the top 5 scoring entities on the "confidence in institutions"
>question:
>
>military 75%
>police 64
>church 53
>banks 53
>presidency 52
>
>With the exception of banks, these represent institutions of
>authority. Organized labor, Congress, and the media are at the
>bottom of the list. This does not suggest promising terrain for
>radical organizing, I'm afraid.
Did Gallup poll Europeans or Japanese on the same questions at the same time?
It may surprise you, but the Harris poll says that Europeans also do not trust trade unions and parliaments:
<blockquote>* Substantial majorities of both Americans (55% to 27%) and Europeans (63% to 28%) distrusted their governments.
* A substantial majority of Americans (56% to 22%) distrusted the Congress. A substantial majority of Europeans (57% to 32%) distrusted their parliaments or elected chambers.
* Adults also tended not to trust trade unions in both the U.S. (51% to 19%) and Europe (50% to 34%).
Source: The Harris Poll® #4, "Fewer Americans Than Europeans Have Trust in the Media - Press, Radio and TV," <http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=534>, January 13, 2005</blockquote>
All in all, as far as current levels of trust and distrust in various social and political institutions are concerned, Americans and Europeans are remarkably similar. Instead of complaining that Americans are more backward than Europeans -- an opinion that is not likely to win over more Americans to left-wing politics -- US leftists should think about how to build on the strengths that do exist in American social and cultural conditions. -- Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * OSU-GESO: <http://www.osu-geso.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>