USA and Europe: Intolerance cuts both ways

PERSPECTIVE

Rocco Buttiglione

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By Kari Huhta
     
      George W. Bush would probably not be acceptable as a European Commissioner, but Rocco Buttiglione might do quite well as a politician in the United States. Which is more intolerant in this respect - Europe, or the United States?
      They certainly are different. Bush, with his religious conservative values, gets a landslide of votes in the United States Presidential elections, but in Europe, Buttiglione, with his conservative religious values, is thrown out of the new European Commission like an old dish rag.
     
Let’s take the loser of the US election, John Kerry, into the equation. One of the reasons that he lost was that he was seen as being too European in his values, and because he speaks French.
      Kerry was trashed as a left-wing liberal, even though he would seem to be politically closer to Buttiglione than to the socialist group of the European Parliament. It is not certain that he would have been acceptable as a European Commissioner, but he is currently one of the most popular politicians in Europe.
      Apparently Europeans and Americans tolerate different things.
      There has been much talk about the setup - most of it unfriendly - on both sides of the Atlantic. The talk does nothing to narrow the gap that exists between the continents.
     
The European comments draw a picture of a Europe which is intellectually more developed than the United States. Europe is "post-clerical" - that is, it has progressed to a higher level than the religiously-dominated age in which the United States still lives.
      If some American sees this as arrogant nonsense, I can fully endorse this view.
      The United States formally moved from clericalism to enlightenment about 215 years ago, when its constitution was amended by a bill of rights defining the rights and freedoms of the individual. In Europe only France managed anything like it. Finland, for instance, has not yet managed to reach this stage of separation of church and state.
     
The use of religion in politics is not forbidden in the United States, or in Europe. The difference is that in the United States, it works.
      One does not have to like it - and many Americans do not. Also in Europe one does not have to like arrogant intolerance wrapped in the gown of political correctness.
      It is rather useless and arrogant to sit in Europe and say that the United States has 59 million stupid voters who made the wrong choice. Bush was elected for a second term as the President of the United States, with clear majorities of the popular and electoral votes in an election whose fairness nobody has questioned.
     
Unlike Buttiglione, it is not possible to get rid of Bush by claiming that his values are wrong. The tolerant sexual and family values that have become predominant in Europe may be enlightened and correct, but they are not universal - not even in Europe. They change as the years go by.
      It would be nice if the evangelical religious forces supporting the US administration would not see their values as universal norms, but there is not much that can be done in these matters.
      Bush is someone who must be lived with, but it will not be easy. Harnessing religion as a part of the election campaign released forces on both sides of the Atlantic which push the United States and Europe further apart from each other.
      Enlightened Europeans like only former US Presidents, and relish Bush least of all. The religious right in the United States would consider Europe a sink of moral degradation even if it stopped whining.
      The family is in crisis.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 5.11.2004


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Finnish suspicions of USA arise again (1.10.2004)

KARI HUHTA / Helsingin Sanomat
kari.huhta@hs.fi