CentralCaliBike said:
Let's take a look at the political intelligence of a couple of European Countries stating with Italy:
I had considered discussing the the five major parties along with the approximately 20 or so minor parties but the following quote says it all:
Then there is the French system, they have well over a dozen parties that cannot do anything without compromising their principle ideals. Interestingly, it is the National Front party that has clear far right ideology which took over third place in French politics by 2006 after having the party founder Jean-Marie Le Pen finish in second place to Jacques Chirac for French Pemier in 2002.
Of course we have the German system. It runs with two major parties, three or four minor parties, and a host of parties with less than 1% of the vote in any given election. Currently they have moved to a leadership for the center-right of the spectrum.
Before you say that Europeans somehow have transcended human nature causing them to have a substantially higher political intelligence quotient, consider that quantity does not mean quality when it comes to political parties, after all this is the same continent that has produced Hitler, Mussolini within the past 100 years.
I just do not see Europeans being substantially more intelligent politically than any other first world political system.
First of all yours is an incredibly superficial and, in many was naive, analysis of the state of political IQ of Eurpeans today. It also demonstrates your total lack of consciousness in regards to the complex political/ideological discussion which exists on the Continent and, which, in the post WWII era, has given rise to the most socially just democratic union that the world has ever known. No doubt because you haven't lived in Europe for any lenght of time, probably don't speak nor read a foreign language to be able to confront at the direct cultural level the well informed and rich political situation here, despite all of its shortcomings of which there are many. No system is perfect.
And this is where the collective political IQ of Europeans has gone far beyond that of American society today, namely in the success of their Union, which could never have come about had it not been for an incredibly intellgent scheme at its foundation. Whereas in the US we have seen the political discussion (and consequently politics iteself) essentially reduced to a market-military issue that leaves very little room for ideas beyond those which do not deviate too far from nor are that hostile to the prevailing ideology of pure capitalism at home and imperilialsim abroad. Nor do the primary and secondary schools, as here, encourage the young toward understanding the ideologies of power and, therefore, ways to be critical toward them with knowledge and not ignorance. In other words political discussion, from a variety of ideologies -marxism, socilaism, capitalism, fascism, anarchism, etc.- are exposed to children form the primary school years. By contrast the American people, especially the youth, have been bombarded with a host of distractions in the hyper-materialistic culture to consciously lower their political IQ (with great effect, so as to be more manipulable - in fact they were especially after 9-11) and with a government-corporate sponsored propaganda campaign to justify the anti-socialized and consumer culture, in addition to the ammoral objectives of its military-industrial block from Vietnam to Chile, to Iran and Iraq. Imperialistic objectives which were/are (especially among the recent necons of the Bush adminstration) no less sinister than the brutality of European Nazi-Fascism of the XX century. And we remember that while Europe was going through the turmoil of revolutions and intercene conflicts from the XIX century forward - in part generated by a new social order created by the rise of Nation States (Italy, Germany, Austria-Hungary) that had previously been in eternal conflict with others (France, England, Russia), and the stress caused on previously rural and peasant society by rapid (and often unjustlly oppressive) capitalist industrialization (which gave rise to the communist ideologies of Marx and Engles, as well as the socialist ones) that lead, eventually, to the highly volitile situation that would explode giving rise to the First and Second World Wars - America was, under the imperialist ideology of "manifest destiny," expanding to the Far West and, in the process, inflicting a veritable genocide of the native Indian population, butchering the Spanish-Mexican territories, eventually would invade Cuba, Central America, the Hawian Islands, Japan and the South pacific causing the deaths of over a million victims all in the name of imperialism and industrial interests. Of course black slavery was a blight on the Nation too, until the civil war. But the assassination of Martin Luther King and the continued tension between blacks and whites in the States means that the rhetoric of "all men created equal" is still a largely unrealized philosphical sentiment.
Therefore one needs to be careful when citing the sins of another, when preaching from a pulpit.
Let's take a look at the parliamentary situation you mention above in France and Germany. LePen is a bufoon, who has been able to count on a growing anxiety among conservatives in France over immigration comming from its former North African colonies, primarily the Algerian population, the younger muslim generation of which, has displayed open hostility to the French culture for its past colonialism and current racism. The sins of colonialism eventually come back to haunt you of course. But Sarkozy is a moderate conservative leader, and most of the French find what LePen represents a shameful imbarassmant and danger to the health of their democracy. In Germany the miracle of unification post-89, was, nonetheless, not without incredible hardships to overome caused by integrating a non-existant Eastern economy into among the strongest in Europe of West Germany. Dispite these difficulties, Germany has in Merkel a strong female premier, a moderate conservative centrist, and still the strongest economy of continental Europe.
Berlusconi is a disgrace, his cynical and ignorant electorate lacking any civil (and moral sense). He, in this sense, perfectly represents the comedic-tragic state of Italian civilization. However half the nation loaths him. Whereas the political leadership of men like Massimo D'Alemma, Walter Veltroni, Dario Franceschini in the opposition and, above all, the President of Italy Giorgio Napolitano, communicate ideological points with a sophistication and aplumb that is such a cut above the average political rhetoric one hears from most politicians in the US (and the idiotic political analysts of Fox, which are, as an American, frankly offensive in their crude baseness). It would be entertaining, for example, to follow a debate by Massimo D'Alemma (a former prime minister) and Sarah Palin (a perhaps future republican presidential candidate). The difference in their respective levels of political culture would be painfully apparant in the former's impecable formation over the later's total inadequacy. And yet, in the dumned down world of Americana, Palin actually is taken seriously by a large segment of the US population. Even the idocy of Berlusconi is moslty instrumental, to mold him into the popuarist demagogue that charms his loyal supporters: whereas Palin
actually is stupid. Whereas if you could read the political-social commentary of journalists like Michele Serra, Giorgio Bocca (a former WWII anti-facist partisian) and Curzio Maltese, you would be aware that there is an entirely different and decidely more intelligent Italy, because intelligently informed by them, than what Berlusconi and his chronies represent. Thus there is hope.
In the end if so many parties exist in the European parliamentary democratic state system, it is preciesly because of the Europeans' comprehenssion of the complex ideological philosophies that have coexisted over the past two hundred yeas or so. Yes, as you correctly indicate, theirs tends to create less political stability, weaker leadership (because of the compises which have to be made), however, this says nothing about a lack of political IQ but to the contrary (and in some instances, perhaps an over preparation). Seneca once said it is easier to get two people to agree on what time it is (in ancient Rome, of course), than it is to have two philosphers come to an ageement. Europe if anything suffers form the philosophers syndrome expressed by Seneca. But,as mentioned before, because of its high political IQ, has given rise to the best from of a social democracy the world has ever known, which has made its citizens live longer with a better quality of life than people of the American State of today.
And it's not as if political compromizes don't need to be made in the US democratic system (healthcare), or that having a strong leadership base has led to better democracy in the US of late (Iraq). There, however, the richness of ideological debate is infinately more simplified, whereas the comprehension of the comlex issues with tremendous consequences for the world we live in today on the part of gass roots America has become despondantly inadequite.
Thus for desired change in American democracy to occur, it is this inadequacy issue in the critical formation of its people which must be adressed. Because democracy is based on majority preferences, preferences which themselves should, in the best democratic environmnet, be based upon a strong cultural background. And so it is to the schools to which America must turn. Here my hopes are decidedly less optimistic. Yet the move away from Bush, and everything he represented, keeps me from final judgment.
(I usually do not pay attention to that). But it was one of the more complete sites that I saw with my query.
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