Today I was thinking yet again about my lack of enthusiasm for being American. And I was thinking yet again how much nicer it would be to be British, for in Britain, despite Tony Blair's best efforts, the levels of ambient evil are still significantly lower. Or Canadian; I'd enjoy being Canadian. Even if their Prime Minister does speak out of the side of his mouth like a Prohibition Chicago gangster. (Any Canadians out there who quite reasonably think the sovereignty of the British monarch over Canada ought to end are invited to contemplate my humble self as her replacement. I'm small, I wouldn't make any fuss, and I don't cost much.)
That in turn led me to ask myself this: what, exactly, is it I find so attractive about the UK?
That being a somewhat overly broad question, I later asked myself this: what is it I look for in a country?
That too being of unmanageable size, I finally asked myself this: what ought a government do for its people? Governments don't exist for their own sake, after all. We have governments instead of anarchy because governments can do things for us that, at least at this stage in human social evolution, anarchy can't, like build roads and keep people from stealing our Playstations and so forth. Governments are utilitarian things, there to ensure we have a congenial environment to get on with our lives in. (I like to end sentences with prepositions sometimes. Also propositions.) What sort of things should a government be expected to do, then? There's the obvious stuff, like national defense, police forces, roads, post offices...But national defense gets far too much press in the US. While preventing terrorist attacks is certainly a Good Idea, there are a lot of other Good Ideas a reasonable government ought to act on, in no particular order...
1. Universal health insurance. The unemployed, the low-income, and particularly children ought to be guaranteed a reasonable level of coverage.
2. Accessible higher education. Deferred loans or outright grants ought to be available to send anyone of reasonable competence to a public university.
3. Welfare. This is not a dirty word. Even Otto von Bismarck saw the need for some provision for the unemployed, the elderly, and those unable to work.
4. Corporate regulation. Big Evil Corporations should not be able to dick over the public. For example, manufacturers shouldn't be allowed to shit into rivers. Nor should firms be allowed to dominate the media and impose their ideologies on the news. Nor should they force us to call in and activate our copies of Windows XP. See also #7. Things like water, power, and rail ought to be in the public sector, not the private.
5. Freedom to enjoy. Governments should ensure that people can rave, dance, listen to rock and roll, fornicate, drink, listen to gangsta rap, play supremely violent video games, watch porn, watch Ashton Kutcher, have sexual intercourse with frozen dead chickens, smoke reefer, watch old episodes of Doctor Who, not go to church, and generally do whatever it takes to keep themselves amused and extract a decent amount of pleasure from life, so long as this doesn't hurt anyone else. Government is not, or should not be, in the morality business.
6. Human rights. Government should be in the business of ensuring everyone gets fair and equal access to the opportunities society offers, regardless of their sex, race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, disabilities, body piercings, age, socialism, unpatriotic character, and other factors I haven't the time to enumerate. Women have the right to seek an abortion; gays have the right to marry and, if they cut the mustard, adopt.
7. Freedom of information, and the right to privacy. Government should also be in the business of ensuring that the free flow of information is not disrupted, either by the government itself, or by corporations; and that the citizenry are free from unreasonable intrusions into their private lives. Strong encryption should be publicly encouraged. Total Information Awareness and the DMCA should not. People have been making mix tapes for decades; what was Napster but the next logical step?
8. More grant money for mathematicians. We're cheap. A mathematician, after all, is a machine for turning controlled subtances into theorems.
This is by no means an exhuastive list, nor are Canada and Britain necessarily getting top marks on all of these. But American politicians have been showing a disturbing lack of enthusiasm for most of these ideas lately. Even my preferred presidential candidate, Howard Dean, doesn't go nearly as far as I would in support of universally healthy well-educated socially secure anti-monopolistic pot-smoking equally-protected file-sharing mathematics. Dean is solidly centrist; only in America could anyone call him 'left-wing' with a straight face. Far better a centrist, though, than a trained monkey bent on taking America back to the Gilded Age.
These are things that I consider important. America's leadership doesn't, nor does a large segment of its population. This is why my country and I don't get on very well.
This is why I'd rather be British; in Britain, socialism is not necessarily a dirty word.
Posted by aloysius at June 18, 2003 02:51 PM | TrackBack |