the list of 9 for october 5, 2009:
NINE WAYS IN WHICH THE U.S. IS DIFFERENT FROM THE REST OF THE WESTERN WORLD
Recently I was having a discussion with a friend and told him that I felt that, of all thecountries in the world, only two can be called truly unique: One is Japan. The other is the UnitedStates of America. And while one might say that Japan is not dissimilar to Korea and the U.S. iskind of like Canada, I say "not really". I'll let somebody else talk about Japan in some otherforum, but as an American, these are nine of the major, major ways in which we differ from therest of the west, or even really the so-called First World. I will try to be fair and impartial.
- We don't use the Metric system. President Carter tried tosteer our country over to going Metric back in the 70s, to align ourselves with literally the restof the world, but Americans are a stubborn lot, and it was a no-go. So today, only the U.S.officially use pounds, yards, quarts, acres and Fahrenheit degrees to measure things. Nokilograms, meters, liters, hectares or Celsius temperatures here! Now, we are not entirely alone,as you can find some of the old "English units" still in use in the United Kingdom, Canada andIreland - mostly the use of feet and miles. But by and large, we are the last holdouts.
- We have far more liberal gun laws. In this case, "liberal"does not mean "left-wing" but "unregulated": an eternal hot-button political issue in the U.S. isthe argument between the freedom to carry guns and the desire to enact stricter gun controllegislation. While we banter back and forth, the rest of the first world nations have far tightergun control, especially with handguns. There are 90 guns per 100 U.S. residents. (This isn't tosay that 9 out of 10 Americans own a gun: millions of Americans have several guns.) Yemen - not aWestern nation - is a distant second with 61 guns per 100 residents. Switzerland is an even moredistant third with 46 guns per 100 residents. And so on. No surprise that, of developed nations,we have by far the highest firearm-related death rate (mostly suicides).
- We work for tips. No country forces you to tip employeesas much as the U.S. does. A 15% tip for your waiter is practically mandatory, and most Americans(mostly those under 50) who receive decent service routinely tip 20%. Hairdressers, cab drivers,maids - nearly everybody in the service sector expects and even financially depends on substantialtips. Compare this with other first world countries, where it is considered a courteous act toleave your spare change behind or perhaps tip as much as 10% for a really good meal. Tippingoutside of restaurants is even less common across the world.
- We have an active capital punishment system. Some stateshave abolished this, but as a country we legally kill more of our citizens than any other nationon Earth, with three exceptions: China, Iran and Saudi Arabia, in that order. Of first worldpeoples, the Japanese the only others who still have the death penalty. But as I said earlier,Japan is kind of unique too.
- We vote for individuals rather than for political parties.Most democracies on this planet are parliamentary democracies: a voter indicates the party theywish to vote for, and then the party chooses the leader(s). But here in individualistic America,even though people often vote upon party lines, one is still encouraged to vote for the person, soyou can vote for a Republican mayor, a Democrat representative, a Republican senator, a Democratgovernor and a Republican president!
- We have essentially a two-party political system. Noticehow I only mention Democrats and Republicans above? Yes, the U.S. has a Green Party, and aLibertarian Party, and even more obscure parties. But they almost never get enough votes to getany of their candidates elected, even to local offices. The parliamentary democracies of othernations often consist of half a dozen or more political parties, each party represented inparliament by the percentage of the vote they receive. Personally, I rather like this system, as Ithink it more accurately serves the varied political beliefs of a country's population. But fornow, we are stuck with our "winner take all" mentality.
- We don't have public health care for those under 65....that is, unless you're a veteran or a Native American, or qualify for aid because of extremepoverty. As most readers know, this has been the big political debate of 2009: depending on thepoll you look at, between 46% and 83% of Americans favor universal health care - that's a prettywide margin of error! But most polls indicate a 60-70% majority in favor. All I will say is thatthe entire rest of the developed world has universal health care, and they do not appear to sufferbecause of it.
- The majority of our population is "very religious". Godbless America: No other first world country (except for Vatican City - no duh) has as nearly higha percentage of its populace that calls themselves "very religious" as the United States. Again,polls vary, and who knows how individuals define "very religious" to themselves, but the numberhovers at around 60%. 85% of Americans refer to themselves as Christians.
- Our head of state is not white. Ending on a progressivenote, although we lag behind many others in electing a female president (the United Kingdom,Germany, Iceland, New Zealand, Pakistan, The Philippines, etc. have all beaten us to the punch),we are the first and only Western country with a leader of black African descent. (There are,naturally, black heads of state throughout Africa and the Caribbean, but no other first worldnation can make our claim.)
|