Yeah, I don't get this either. It's a weird kind of American exceptionalism, except in reverse: we can't have good broadband on a national level like in Finland, because America! a strong social welfare system won't work here like it does in Scandinavia, because America! People won't adapt to biking, because America!
Yeah, we're bigger and more diverse, but so what? It's like people give up on solving problems, and use that as an excuse, without even trying.
When I think of the conservatism that's really hurting us, it's not Fox News or any of those right-wing nitwits, it's otherwise-smart people putting out this attitude of "we can't do anything, because America!"
> When I think of the conservatism that's really hurting us, it's not Fox News or any of those right-wing nitwits, it's otherwise-smart people putting out this attitude of "we can't do anything, because America!"
Ironically, it was the wide-eyed liberal optimists of their day that inflicted suburbia on us. Disrupting how we built cities to that point was supposed to make everything better.
This is true. The zoning laws that led to suburbia were introduced in the 1910s and 1920s by well-meaning "progressives" who decried the ability of the rich to cloister themselves in country estates while the poor were forced to live among commerce in the city.
They won, and the result was the legislation of vast suburban "residential" zones where commercial business was prohibited, with minimum lot sizes and setbacks and minimum space between houses.
Yeah, that's too bad. The wide-eyed liberal optimists got it wrong a hundred years ago. Shame that now the stodgy never-change-anything conservatives are clinging to that wrong idea from a hundred years ago, and once again the wide-eyed liberal optimists are trying to make it right!
> When I think of the conservatism that's really hurting us, it's not Fox News or any of those right-wing nitwits, it's otherwise-smart people putting out this attitude of "we can't do anything, because America!"
I've quite often heard the "because America!" lines you refer to -- in response to the specific issues you mention -- used by Fox News and similar right-wing outlets. So, I'm not sure the two things you contrast here as sources of the issue are actually mutually exclusive alternatives, rather than closely related facets of the same thing.
This is simply the leftist version of the American exceptionalism thesis.
Whereas conservatives focus on supposed positive exceptional attributes of America, multiple generations of leftists have now promoted and developed the inverse: the idea that America is forever fundamentally broken (due to the power of big corporations, evil conservatives, Fox News, etc.), and thus certain problems that others can solve are deemed inherently unsolveable in America.
> This is simply the leftist version of the American exceptionalism thesis.
Strange description, because pretty much every example I've seen of this has been someone on the left saying "Of course we can do better in this area, see how it works in <other country>!" followed by someone on the right saying "No, we that won't work here, because America!".
(Sometimes pointing to something that might arguably be a legitimate difference -- I'm not saying that this pattern is universally wrong, just that there doesn't seem to be anything leftist about it, if anything, it tends to be the opposite.)
The closest I've seen from the Left to this is the defeatist version "we could in theory do that here and it would work, but it isn't politically viable because America!." But, OTOH, I've seen that form from the Right, too, just on different issues.
Yeah, like dragonwriter says, I never see this on the left. The left is almost always coming out and saying "This is what's wrong with America, and we should fix it."
I can't remember ever seeing any left-leaning or progressive type throw up their hands and say, "well, that just won't work here."
I will acknowledge that political conservatives or right-leaning types often do suggest that problems are solvable, but these days I only ever see right-leaning types suggesting that "the free market" will solve a problem (and, conversely, if it's one of the large class of things that the free market can't solve, then it is either not a problem or it is not solvable).
Still, the whole "it can't be done here" is, if not right-leaning, at least a conservative attitude in the sense of not trying to change anything. It just adds in an extra layer of (often irrelevant or nonsensical) defeatism, like the problem is unsolvable, and not just difficult.
It's weird, because we could put people on the moon, but a city can't adapt to a more bike-friendly way of life?
Yeah, we're bigger and more diverse, but so what? It's like people give up on solving problems, and use that as an excuse, without even trying.
When I think of the conservatism that's really hurting us, it's not Fox News or any of those right-wing nitwits, it's otherwise-smart people putting out this attitude of "we can't do anything, because America!"