From: andy@infotec.ch (Andrew Warinner)
Subject: Re: Ugly Americans-It's not our fault
Organization: Infotec S.A.
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 1992 13:37:52 GMT


Guy Roberts sez:

>folse@crs.cl.msu.edu (Mark Folse) writes:

>>I just had to post something on this.
>>According oto the University of Michigan (press release of 
>>Oct. 5, 1992) its not our fault that southern Americans 
>>are teh way we are: its the result of our forebearers, 
>>with the blame evenly divided between "swashbuckling 
>>English cavaleirs" and "reinforced, some years later, 
>>by immigrants from the Irish and Scotch border lands."

>Interesting. But how can anyone explain that the European 
>countries where these violent types originated from
>have much lower rates of violent crime than the USA ?
>...
>Maybe the USA has a violent culture because violence was
>needed to remove the indigenous peoples so that Europeans
>could have the country ?
>
>Perhaps Australia and New Zealand are more peaceful because
>there were fewer aboriginal people to kill before
>establishing European "civilisation". Once started, cruelty 
>is a kind of information which has a life of its own.

Interesting ideas indeed.  But I don't think you need to go
back to settlers vs. injuns to find mass violence in the U.S.  
Europeans tend to forget the (American) Civil War.  About 
600,000 Americans died.  The Union finally won the war be 
adopting a scorched earth policy, destroying the economic 
sinews of the Confederacy, consuming or confiscating all food 
supplies creating floods of refugees.  The conflicts of the 
American expansion pale by comparison.  They did not seriously 
tax the powers the government.  The U.S. Army fielded less than 
50,000 soldiers before and after the Civil War.  At the height 
of the Civil War, over 1 million Americans were soldiers.  The 
average American was far more likely to experience the horror 
of violence at a place like Shiloh, Fredericksburg, Sharpsburg, 
or Gettysburg than to fight in the Indian wars.  In the battle
of the Sharpsburg (or Antietam), more soldiers were killed in 20
minutes than in the first day of the invasion of Normandy during
WWII.  What nation in Europe has had a civil war in the 19th
or 20th century?  Russia/USSR and the Balkans with all their 
transient nation-states.  Guess where there is widespread
violence in Europe now?  The U.S. seems to have gotten over 
its Civil War rather well by comparison.

But I think a more plausible explanation of violence in the
U.S. is the abundant stockpile of privately owned firearms,
a relatively weak central government with distinct checks 
on its powers, and great influxes of immigrants from vastly 
different cultures. Shake well economically, and voila! The U.S.A.!

Look on the bright side.  If there wasn't as much violence
in the U.S., we wouldn't produce those police TV shows and
films that you Europeans love so much.  How many cars chases
and shoot-outs have you seen on "Inspector Morse"? :-)

This thread looks like a big can of gasoline (read "petrol")
with a sign saying "Light Me!" on the side ;-).  Let the flames
begin!

Andrew Warinner				"Semper ubi sub ubi"
(andy@infotec.ch)			Infotec S.A.
phone: 022/738 44 33			8 avenue de Frontenex
fax:   022/786 50 61			1207 Geneva, Switzerland