There has been much talk recently about Canada and Australia converging again after many years of marching off in different directions. It's hard to determine, though, not the least because Canadians are not so well-informed about the rest of the world as Americans are (and, Lord knows, that's a pretty tragic story in itself) and therefore it is difficult to discuss the matter.
Are you meaning that Canadians are not so well-informed about the rest of the world as *Australians* are? I don't think Canadians are less well-informed than Americans; rather the reverse.
That a group with a leader is more capable than one without, even if the leader is incompetent, is pretty basic and I would place the dissenters in a bucket with the folks who are uncertain as to whether the world is round.
I have no idea where you would place me (nor do I care very much) but I disagree with you. I would say that a group with a competent, honest, responsible, and ethical leader is more capable than the same group without a leader is likely to be. But with an underhanded, dishonest, unethical leader, the group is going to go firmly and rapidly in a direction few if any of the members of that group would wish to go. And with an incompetent leader, the group will do little but navel-gazing, or spin off madly in all directions. (I have no idea why I want to use these cliches here, but apparently I do.)
That Americans are a highly regimented society has been obvious for as long as I can remember. And the more educated they are, the more conformant and unthinking they become.
Highly regimented, conformant, and unthinking, yes. It has been so for a long time, accompanying it with a nasty mythology of being freedom-loving and nonconformist. But I don't think it's true that the more educated Americans are worse in that respect. The universities have long (at least since the '60s) been centres of liberalism and radicalism, of progressive thought and of analysis of what's wrong with the American system as it is.
The part on family sits oddly, as George W. Bush has a nurturative rather than conservative outlook on family.
Are you crazy?
No, I doubt if you're crazy, but you must be using a very odd definition of "nurturant" when you apply it to GW Bush. He nurtures the large corporations and his own cronies, true, and perhaps those families that conform to his own views on what families should be*, but who else does he nurture?
*That automatically leaves out all poor families. By the conservative "strict father" model George Lakoff describes, if a family is poor its father is not a responsible man and therefore not deserving of any kind of government assistance -- and of course if there is no father, then it's not a proper family at all.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2004-10-19 05:52 am (UTC)Are you meaning that Canadians are not so well-informed about the rest of the world as *Australians* are? I don't think Canadians are less well-informed than Americans; rather the reverse.
That a group with a leader is more capable than one without, even if the leader is incompetent, is pretty basic and I would place the dissenters in a bucket with the folks who are uncertain as to whether the world is round.
I have no idea where you would place me (nor do I care very much) but I disagree with you. I would say that a group with a competent, honest, responsible, and ethical leader is more capable than the same group without a leader is likely to be. But with an underhanded, dishonest, unethical leader, the group is going to go firmly and rapidly in a direction few if any of the members of that group would wish to go. And with an incompetent leader, the group will do little but navel-gazing, or spin off madly in all directions. (I have no idea why I want to use these cliches here, but apparently I do.)
That Americans are a highly regimented society has been obvious for as long as I can remember. And the more educated they are, the more conformant and unthinking they become.
Highly regimented, conformant, and unthinking, yes. It has been so for a long time, accompanying it with a nasty mythology of being freedom-loving and nonconformist. But I don't think it's true that the more educated Americans are worse in that respect. The universities have long (at least since the '60s) been centres of liberalism and radicalism, of progressive thought and of analysis of what's wrong with the American system as it is.
The part on family sits oddly, as George W. Bush has a nurturative rather than conservative outlook on family.
Are you crazy?
No, I doubt if you're crazy, but you must be using a very odd definition of "nurturant" when you apply it to GW Bush. He nurtures the large corporations and his own cronies, true, and perhaps those families that conform to his own views on what families should be*, but who else does he nurture?
*That automatically leaves out all poor families. By the conservative "strict father" model George Lakoff describes, if a family is poor its father is not a responsible man and therefore not deserving of any kind of government assistance -- and of course if there is no father, then it's not a proper family at all.