American Civility vs. French Lack-thereof.

From looking at the presidential political campaign outside the United States one might be under the impression not only that the country is highly divided and even that it is almost on the verge of community breakdown. Then if you add the news-clips showing gun violence, religious extremism and offensive rhetoric, you may have a pretty negative picture of American society today possibly re-inforced by the magnifying effect of the the Internet and short Youtube videos that go viral.

This, however, is very far from the reality of day-to-day life of ordinary Americans.

One common reaction of many French people when they first visit the United States is how incredibly kind, smily and courteous Americans are towards them. It is so unusual to the French that they may even find it a little suspicious and wonder if there must be some ulterior motives (and they sometimes point to service jobs where people's smile may be proportionate to the expected tip, or to the abuse of the term "friend" for someone you just met).
They may be some hypocrites of course - there always are - but it is true that essentially Americans are a very generous and helpful people.

In this week's Economist, Lexington also found that civility in the United States endures:

To a visitor, America remains a strikingly courteous place, where strangers may expect to be helped and asked for help, and good manners are prized. Neighbourhoods remain neighbourly. 

This is right. Even in the midst of political tensions between France and the U.S. governments over the war in Iraq in 2003, I, as a French person, have always felt as welcome as ever and was never treated differently - I never saw "freedom fries" outside the House of Representatives cafeteria.

Statistics (see here) also seem to indicate that Americans have on of the highest levels of pro-social behaviors of all OECD countries, almost twice as much as the French (who are below OECD average). Here pro-social behavior is measured by whether the respondent has volunteered time, donated money to a charity and helped a stranger in the last month. It is hard to drawn any definite conclusion from these statistics as to why there is a such a gap between the French and the Americans, but one can make hypotheses:

In France people are more likely to rely on the government when it comes to helping the needy, which in turn makes it more acceptable to pay higher taxes, whereas in the United States, charity is more the job of private individuals. (And by the way, the major role of the State in France has nothing to do with socialism, as it is often misunderstood by Americans. It dates back way before socialism was even an idea - to at least the 17th century and Louis XIV notably when the French State unified the country around certain cultural and linguistic norms, which became the model eventually followed by the French  Republic.)

As far as helping strangers, the Economist had another suggestion for American civility:

In a big and mobile country, being a stranger is common: feeling able to trust other strangers is an economic and civic boon.

This could not be more different from the French may be the least mobile people in Europe. France is the only country that never had massive waves of emigration to North America, not even to Canada, which was founded by a relative small amount of people. This may be because the French culture grew out of rural communities whose basic unit was traditionally held by the family.

It may also be that Americans can differentiate politics from the people they meet but also that Americans tend to be less political than the French who always love a good heated debate. In my experience Americans like to keep their political views more private than the French. Moerover, a  lot of Americans may be more immune to political differences because they have tended to cluster in communities of sameness, with people with similar political beliefs (see for instance, The Big Sort, by Bill Bishop).

Whatever the explanation, it remains that social relations in America are extremely pleasant and relaxed, and one can only wish for a little more civility in the rest of the world, and particularly in France. In the end, this may be the main reason why I always need to recharge my batteries and come to the U.S. after a few months in France.

Is Law and Order a Cultural Phenomenon or a Political Choice?

Here's another result from the OECD which I find worth giving because the numbers are so impressive :

PRISON POPULATION

The US has the greatest prison population rate in the world and not just a bit - 11 times the rate of France and 5.4 times the rate of the OECD average.

	Prison population rate, per 100 000 population in 2008
France	96
USA	760
OECD	140

This graph is very impressive. In fact, between 1972 and 2010 prison population increased 705%.

The reason is tougher longer sentences for crimes that that would not necessarily produce prison sentences in other countries such as dug use.

Even though the crime rate has recently declined in the U.S. it is still about 4 times the level of Europe - especially when it comes to violent crime. (here)

So is toughness on crime a distinct feature of American culture? Not according to Tocqueville anyway :

"In no country is criminal justice administered with more mildness than in the United States.", he wrote in 'Democracy in America' (Book III, chapter I)

Here's an interesting point raised by this 2008 NYTimes article :

Some scholars have found that English-speaking nations have higher prison rates.

"Although it is not at all clear what it is about Anglo-Saxon culture that makes predominantly English-speaking countries especially punitive, they are," Tonry wrote last year in "Crime, Punishment and Politics in Comparative Perspective."

"It could be related to economies that are more capitalistic and political cultures that are less social democratic than those of most European countries," Tonry wrote. "Or it could have something to do with the Protestant religions with strong Calvinist overtones that were long influential."

The American character — self-reliant, independent, judgmental — also plays a role.

"America is a comparatively tough place, which puts a strong emphasis on individual responsibility," Whitman of Yale wrote. "That attitude has shown up in the American criminal justice of the last 30 years."

French-speaking countries, by contrast, have "comparatively mild penal policies," Tonry wrote.

There are also major differences within the U.S. which may be culturally significant :

"Minnesota looks more like Sweden than like Texas," said Mauer of the Sentencing Project. (Sweden imprisons about 80 people per 100,000 of population; Minnesota, about 300; and Texas, almost 1,000. Maine has the lowest incarceration rate in the United States, at 273; and Louisiana the highest, at 1,138.)

From a European perspective, there is definitely a sense that the U.S. is a tough place to live. And as you get older, you tend to be less fascinated by the opportunities and more concerned by the toughness of the system - it be health-care, high violent crime, costly education or a harsh judicial system.


Another more objective major difference is that judges and prosecutors are elected in the U.S. which while being more democratic makes them giving in to popular demand and be "tough on crime". Watch any episode of Law and Order to see what I mean.


To be fair, it must be noted that for the first time in about 40 years, the American jail population has actually declined in the past 2 years (but not its prison rate)

For the second consecutive year the U.S. jail population has dropped -- by 2.4 percent in the 12 months ending June 30, Justice Department officials said.
Report author Todd D. Minton, a statistician at the Bureau of Justice Statistics, said the number of inmates in local jails mainly operated by a local law enforcement dropped from 767,434 to 748,728, following a 2.3 percent decline in 2009. (UPI.com)

A change of heart? Hardly. Pure American pragmatism - crowded jails and soaring costs are impossible recipes in an economic crisis that makes even close schools. (see here and here)

The vast majority of states and local governments are operating under severe budget difficulties and correctional administrators have been told to cut spending. Elaborate explanations will be offered but the heart of the matter is budget. Cities, counties and states can no longer afford the current rates of incarceration. (source)

U.S. Censorship of Al Jazeera.

Seeing a revolution or a war unfolding live on television is always fascinating and somewhat exciting and in many ways the protest-revolution in Egypt has reminded me of the Revolutions in Eastern Europe, (particularly in Romania where television played a crucial role).

Of all television coverage on the events in Cairo, Al-jazeera’s has been the most interesting one, mostly because it offers a different perspective a but also because it is the most watched tv channel in the Arab world. Much has been said about the importance of online social networks such as Twitter and Facebook - whose role may have been exaggerated in the West - but these are only available to the young in the -upper-middle-class whereas most Egyptians are informed through satellite television and not the net.

Al Jazeera has done such a good job that it has been specifically targeted as their bureau in Cairo was shut down and their network’s licenses and accreditation cancelled or withdrawn.

This is not the first time that they have been banned, restricted or threatened by autocratic Arab regimes since they started broadcasting in 1996 - in Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and even Kuwait.

But until this week, I had never realized that the reason I can watch Al-Jazeera is that I do not live in the United-States where it has been banned from the largest cable networks.

As Frank Rich pointed out in his excellent Op-Ed in the NYTimes this week:

… in America, it can be found only in Washington, D.C., and on small cable systems in Ohio and Vermont. None of the biggest American cable and satellite companies — Comcast, DirecTV and Time Warner — offer it.

This week the director-general of the Al Jazeera network wrote an interesting article in Newsweek which caught my attention. In it, he underlines the contradiction between the much claimed free press concept in the West and the refusal to provide “alternative viewpoints” to the American audience.

Of course, as always in the West, the censorship is never direct but it is sugarcoated with commercial reasons like :

… the insistence by U.S. operators that Americans are not interested. From a commercial standpoint, they argued, Al Jazeera was not worth their precious bandwidth. (Newsweek)

Of course, Al Jazeera claims otherwise – and they seem to have figures to prove their point:

Tony Burman, Al Jazeera’s head of strategy for the Americas, said traffic to the satelite network's English-language website, where a live stream of its broadcast is available, increased 2,500% during the past week of Egypt coverage. He said up to 60% of the traffic was from the United States. (LATimes)

The « commercial reason » is moot (more here) if you consider the loads of useless crappy channels available on U.S. cable tv anyway.

In reality American broadcasters are afraid of the fearmongers on the right like Bill O’Reilly who brands the Arabic channel “anti-American” and “anti-Semitic” – which shows his utter ignorance since Arabs are semitic people -. Of course, this accusation would be propagated by Islamophobic Foxnews. After all, this view of Al Jazeera was first promoted by officials in Bush administration when they didn’t like the graphic footage from the war in Iraq. There have even been allegations of a memo in which president Bush speculated about a U.S. bombing raid on Al Jazeera world headquarters in the Qatari capital and other locations.

More generally this virtual ban of Al Jazeera in the United-States is the “consequence of a decade’s worth of indiscriminate demonization of Arabs in America”.

Of course, the Qatari channel is at times critical of US and Israeli policy – it may also show crude images of wars but it has the merit of giving another perspective and an Arabic insight which might help Americans (who are willing) understand a bit better what the Arab world is about.

In any case, before anything else it should be a question of principle. Freedom of expression cannot stop at what makes you uncomfortable. If Al Jazeera is available even in Israel, why not in the United-States?

It is time for Americans to do at home what they ask others to do in the world for credibility sake.

Guns, an American National Myth.

"Every country has people with mental problems but not every country gives those people such easy access to guns, yet it seems it is almost outside the possible realm of discussion here [in the U.S.]".

This comment by a BBC journalist reflects pretty much how Europeans (and possibly the world) view last week's shooting in Tucson.

Gun culture in the United-States is probably the hardest thing for Europeans (or for that matter probably the rest of the world) to even begin to fathom. How to explain that?

It seems to me that this is in part the result of the pervasive influence of the Frontier Myth in American culture and politics. (Richard Slotkin's Gunfighter Nation: the Myth of the Frontier in 20th century America" offers a remarkable study of this phenomenon.).
The prevalence of this myth has many consequences, one of which is the idea that violence is the (manly) way to solve problems compared to (weak female-like) discussion or 'diplomacy'. In fact, if you carefully study political discourse, including presidential speech, you realize that this is very much the narrative of most presidents, who use this sort of rhetoric to justify wars.

So in fact gun culture is very much part of the national narrative. Yet, one can also argue that it is even more at the center of conservative ideology which tends to emphasize traditional masculine virtues of strength and the protection of women, children and property by use of force versus the feminized view of cooperation (i.e. like calling the police) so it is no surprise that Republicans should be overwhelmingly against gun control (see this gallup poll).
According to the Pew Reasearch Center survey director Scott Keeter :
"There is a very large partisan divide on the issue, with 70% of Republicans but only 30% of Democrats saying it's more important to protect the rights of gun owners than to control gun ownership"

The difficulty with national myths is that they are so ingrained that it is almost impossible for most people to think outside their frames. It is very much like the way French see their language or their relation to government. It is beyond reason for most people because it is at the core of national identities and thinking outside the national frame takes time and effort.

But still, being hard does not mean we should not try, and it might be helpful to see how people outside, our nations, people who did not grow up with the same myths, see what we do and how we think.

In the case of the United-States, what makes it even harder for a lot of Americans to challenge their national myths about gun is that the right to bear arms is in Constitution (a sacred national text, if any):

"A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

Of course, this was written when a stay-at-home militia was necessary to perform the role of police to keep order or to help the Continental Army defeat the British, before the United-States had a string military of its own.
Many conservatives have put forward the argument that the right to bear arms is indeed about preventing 'tyranny.' As a matter of fact (conservative) Supreme Court Justice Scalia himself has used this argument in "District of Columbia Vs. Heller".

This may have made sense in 1791 but who in their right mind would think that civilians with guns could fight the U.S. army if case of a tyrannical government?
As Rachel Maddow put it this week, we may as well make machine guns, mortars, cannons, anti-tank guns available to civilians then if we want to be able to defeat the military and overthrow a potential tyrannical government.
A lot of Americans also buy guns for self-protection but on the same show, Maddow exemplified why more guns does not necessarily mean better protection : an armed bystander at the Tuscon shooting almost shot the hero that disarmed the shooter :

"I saw another individual holding the firearm. I kind of assumed he was the shooter. So I grabbed his wrist and you know told him to drop it and forced him to drop the gun on the ground. When he did that, everybody says, no, no, it's this guy." (Rawstory)

The last point one cannot ignore is that it is also about politics and the NRA(National Rifle Association) is (along with AIPAC) one of the most powerful and active lobbies in Washington. According to Scott Keeter

"even in years when there was more public support for gun control than there is now, legislative action on the issue often responded more to opponents of gun control. One reason may be that relatively few elected officials, especially in recent years, have spoken out strongly in favor of gun control, leaving the issue to be defined mostly by opponents." (WP)

The U.S. is the most armed country in the world, according to a 2007 study. In 2004, about 25% of all adults, and 40 % of American households, owned at least one firearm. And of course, most homicides being commited by firearms, it is no surprise that the U.S. homicide rate, even with years of decline, is the highest in the industrialized world with about 5 per 100,000 people, over 3 times the the average rate in Western Europe (1.5) and France (1.6). (Wiki)

It makes sense. After all, it is a lot easier to kill someone by pulling the trigger than by using a knife.

Homicide rate in the world.