Shortly after I first moved to the UK, I heard a speech by a political leader here. Here are just a few of the priorities he was establishing:
- Make Britain greener (and urged people to see "An Inconvenient Truth")
- Support gay and lesbian civil partnerships
- Protect the NHS (their socialized medicine) from budget cuts
- Appeared to oppose privatizing NHS
- Levy higher taxes against carbon-producing companies
- Support more family-friendly working conditions, including money for childcare
- Opposed blindly cutting taxes
- Opposed national ID cards as a threat to civil liberty
- Pursue a foreign policy that doesn't slavishly follow US foreign policy
Of course, if a US politician were to make such statements, they would immediately be branded a far-left liberal whack job. Fox News would be after him like hounds chasing, well, a fox. Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and many others would be mocking him. But this speech was by David Cameron, the leader of the UK conservative party.
Mind you, this isn't to say that Cameron isn't a conservative. He definitely has strong views which are often associated with the "right" (for lack of a better term). He wants more prisons built, he wants a smaller government and low taxes (that doesn't contradict the above statements -- he's not for "blindly" lowering taxes), he wants a vigorous fight against terrorism and supports both the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. However, at the end of the day, he wouldn't make it as a Democratic candidate in the US, much less a Republican one.
In fact, as I look around to various democratically elected major powers, the US is the furthest to the right of any of them. Many people like to cling to the belief that "we're #1" and our political system is the reason why, but lets face it: much of our economic might stems from our huge, homogenous country and a wealth of natural resources. But even then, there are severe problems with US society. (If there is no link, the information can be verified by reading the 2007/2008 Human Development Indicators (pdf) report published by the United Nations. If there is a link, you can still probably verify it there):
- Has one of the highest infant mortality rates in the developed world (7 per 1000 live births). This is up from tenth place back in 1970.
- But that number is twice as high if you're black.
- Has a shockingly high maternal death rate (three times higher if you're black)
- We spend the largest percentage of our GDP on health care but our public health expenditures are amongst the lowest.
- Has one of the highest percentages of adults lacking functional literacy skills
- Has the greatest income disparity between rich and poor
- Is tied for third largest percentage of GDP spent on the military (but we're number one in the top twenty)
- Has the largest share of CO2 emissions, even if you measure on a per capita basis
- Is the world's largest exporters of weapons, when measured in dollars, and especially if measured as a percentage of the world export share
- Is also, curiously enough, one of the largest importer of weapons (in dollars)
Of course, there's still plenty right about the US, but the issues cited above are largely issues of choice. We choose to have these health care costs. We choose to be the world's largest arms dealer. We choose to let minorities get offered worse services. And we can add to this sad tally the knowledge that we now have more than one percent of our population in prison, the highest rate in the world.
This is what our right wing policies have won us. It's high time that we paid attention to the rest of the world and see that there are ways of having high standards of living and excellent quality of life. Don't let the US political leaders fool you.