Comment by frontfor
21 days ago
The point is basically no one else has politicised this to the extent the US did. Pointing to how different countries solve it differently is missing the point completely.
21 days ago
The point is basically no one else has politicised this to the extent the US did. Pointing to how different countries solve it differently is missing the point completely.
"Well, whether it's better to fluoridate the water or not, ~half the world got the answer wrong. But the important thing is they didn't argue about it."
They do have a point. If you look at history, Americans do seem to have a bizarre habit of turning everything into a great controversy.
The British abolished slavery with a vote of parliament. The Russian emperor signed a decree, and freed the serfs. Compromised were made, compensation provided and people were made free. But for some reason, Americans felt the matter is important enough to start a civil war around it.
People complain about America being divided and both sides there being unable to compromise, but if anything, that's been the defining feature of the nation since it's creation. "Y'all should take a chill pill, this ain't that important" is a perfectly valid position to have.
> Americans felt the matter is important enough to start a civil war around it.
The answer was the same then as it is now: big business. Slave labor cash crops were central to the economy of the South. Great Britain was not dependent on it in the same way.
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> The British abolished slavery with a vote of parliament
The situation was fundamentally different. Colonies that allowed slavery had no representation in parliament and the slave owners received massive “compensation” that the British people had to spend decades paying off..
Also AFAIK most slaveholders were living in Britain and just viewed their plantations as just another investment. There was very little ideological/“way of life”/racial supremacy stuff involved. So if some Liberals wanted to buyout their not necessarily very liquid “property” with cash they didn’t really have much reason to oppose it.
And then there were 5x more slaves in the US in 1864 while the population was only ~30% higher than that of Britain in 1830 (only if we don’t count the colonies).
Not sure how excited would the inhabitants of New England and other free states would have been if they were forced to buy out all the slaves in the country (if that was even an option).
Slavery for the British was a side note at that point while it was a fundamental component of the US economy.
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> If you look at history, Americans do seem to have a bizarre habit of turning everything into a great controversy.
It sure is bizarre for the parts of the world where people are born to do as they're told and shut up.
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More like "there are pros and cons but there doesn't have to be a big political fight about it".
The "big political fight" here is that one out of fifty US states changed its mind, to be clear.
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