Lee Corbin wrote:
>
> Someone recently pointed out that Europeans would
> never rise to the near Nazi-level of anti-smoking
> hysteria that characterizes present-day America.
>
> (I hope that this isn't another thread-killing
> instance of Godwin's Law.)
>
> So can anyone explain why is it that Americans (and the
> English) get extreme about silly and unimportant things,
> while Europeans save their going nuts for profound and
> serious matters?
First off, I don't consider someone's ethnicity to be a 'profound and
serious' matter, while I do consider things like privacy, self
responsibility, self defense, and self expression to be extremely
profound and serious matters. Despite the fact that National Socialism
can find its roots in 19th century America (Edward Bellamy's novel
"Looking Backward" predicted every nation would practice it), it never
really took off here, no seats in congress were ever held by actual
Nazis, while Nazi parties sat in the parliaments of at least a half
dozen european nations prior to WWII, and passed a large number of
eugenics, segregation, and gun control laws in that period.
In the view of many Americans here, it is the europeans who get extreme
with very silly policies.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Oct 12 2001 - 14:39:41 MDT