Replies

I’m not sure where you have picked up your knowledge of the U.K., but it is not a static society that continual reflects season two of Dowton Abbey.

The pre-WW I UK is not the post WWII UK which is not the post cold-war UK. My great-grandfather came over to the U.S. from England in 1919, and I remember him relating what life was like before the war. I doubt very much that boys are still punished for nodding to the coal man or the modern day equivalent in the streets, and people are no longer snatched from the ranks and commissioned when a family friend recognizes them in passing and realizes that they are not where they should be from society’s viewpoint. Even in the pre-WW I society there was some movement, but it was more gradual (my great-grandfather’s mother’s side had been rising for several generations, while his father’s side was on the way down).

Three of my close co-workers are from the U.K., another, while a Canuck was Oxford educated, and I had a half-dozen Brits that I was close to during university (all my grad stuff was done in Canada, so this is not as unusual as it might be in the States). Perhaps you have more extensive current knowledge of UK society—feel free to share it.

The current U.S. is also not the pre-WWI U.S. or the post WW II U.S. It is not a class based society in the sense that one is pretty well confined to the social caste one is born in, but it is class based in the sense that there are certain classes of persons that are protected and certain classes that are not. You failed to respond to any of the examples given in the second paragraph of my post 41, and I’ll raise you two more—try keeping paperwork in the same way that the IRS does, or picking and choosing which laws to keep the way that certain members of the Executive branch do.

My own immediate personal experience has been on the Canadian side and in a wide swath of the states (I grew up in the west, went to school in the east, and spent some time in the south before scooting up to Ontario, and my parents have since moved to the mid-west). I know that Canada, and particularly Montreal, used to be a class-based society in many ways. It is not that way now. The MPs that I have conversed with, one of whom I know somewhat (I know his wife better)are much more accessible and down to earth than the U.S. politicians I have had dealings with. It probably helps that the Canadian constituencies are around one-seventh the size of a U.S. congressional district in terms of population and that parliament is only in session about half the year. My boss, who grew up in Montreal at the end of the old days, is on good terms with a number of ministers on both the provincial and federal level, and also moves at ease with all sorts of people that he is in daily contact with.

Canada is largely a nation of laws, not of men. The U.S. is headed in the direction of being a nation of men, not of laws. Very few Canadian MPs are or become millionaires—you can’t say the same about the U.S. Senate.

Things do vary from place to place in the States, and I imagine that Georgia has seen some improvement over time, but Oregon, which I know best, has been on a 50 year slide and the bottom is no where in sight. My impression is that more of the states are on the way down than on the way up.

I won’t claim Canada is perfect—last fall I had a sniper on my porch and another in my woodpile because of absurd over-reaction to a domestic dispute across the street—but you don’t hear about Mounties or the OPP shooting dogs, and when the police shoot people, someone at arms length investigates. Toronto cops average killing about 3 people a year—in a city of about 2.5 million. About once every three years a Toronto cop goes on trial because of a killing. They usually end up acquitted, but the most questionable cases are handled by a jury. I could be wrong, but I think that the percentage of police killings in the U.S. that are presented a jury to allow the public to render a verdict on is not only less than 10% but less than 1%. In which country are law officers a special class?