>> On economic issues yes, but not on social and cultural issues. France is to the right of America on each of the issues I listed above except public religion. For example, France's abortion law (which generally bars abortions after 14 weeks) would not survive under Roe (which requires abortion to be generally available up to viability, which is 22-24 weeks). On color blindness versus race consciousness, centrist Macron is far to the right of American progressives: https://wset.com/news/nation-world/france-denounces-american.... Macron, in fact, has specifically attacked "woke" progressive ideology.
>> The only exception is religion--France is aggressively secular. But France is the exception on that front. For example, the UK still technically requires all schools to have daily prayers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_prayer#United_Kingdom. That law would be unconstitutional in the U.S. Likewise, public funding for religious schooling, which is common in Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, etc., would be unconstitutional in the U.S. In another example, in Bavaria it is mandatory to display a cross on public buildings: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kreuzpflicht. By contrast, in the U.S. there was a big kerfuffle recently about whether it was permissible to have a cross sculpture on public property.
THANK YOU. It's so refreshing to actually see someone not treat leftism-rightism as a monolithic thing measured via free healthcare.
As far as I'm concerned, leftism and rightism are best understood as inchoate moral intuitions that are given form in things like culture, philosophy and various creeds, and those creeds frequently contradict each other. The world wished for by a postliberal paleocon and a libertarian transhumanist couldn't be more different, yet both are ostensibly on the right. Woke intersectionalists and TERFs literally run different patches of the same ideology, both solidly on the left, and are for all practical purposes at war, and the list goes on and on.
Treating them as monoliths is not always useful.
> For example, France's abortion law (which generally bars abortions after 14 weeks) would not survive under Roe (which requires abortion to be generally available up to viability, which is 22-24 weeks).
Similar thing in the Nordic country where I live: People are very pro-choice in terms of having abortion be available and an okay choice to make, but understand that abortion is a grave matter and the law reflects it, something that'd likely look really weird to Americans.
>> The only exception is religion--France is aggressively secular. But France is the exception on that front. For example, the UK still technically requires all schools to have daily prayers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_prayer#United_Kingdom. That law would be unconstitutional in the U.S. Likewise, public funding for religious schooling, which is common in Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, etc., would be unconstitutional in the U.S. In another example, in Bavaria it is mandatory to display a cross on public buildings: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kreuzpflicht. By contrast, in the U.S. there was a big kerfuffle recently about whether it was permissible to have a cross sculpture on public property.
THANK YOU. It's so refreshing to actually see someone not treat leftism-rightism as a monolithic thing measured via free healthcare.
As far as I'm concerned, leftism and rightism are best understood as inchoate moral intuitions that are given form in things like culture, philosophy and various creeds, and those creeds frequently contradict each other. The world wished for by a postliberal paleocon and a libertarian transhumanist couldn't be more different, yet both are ostensibly on the right. Woke intersectionalists and TERFs literally run different patches of the same ideology, both solidly on the left, and are for all practical purposes at war, and the list goes on and on.
Treating them as monoliths is not always useful.
> For example, France's abortion law (which generally bars abortions after 14 weeks) would not survive under Roe (which requires abortion to be generally available up to viability, which is 22-24 weeks).
Similar thing in the Nordic country where I live: People are very pro-choice in terms of having abortion be available and an okay choice to make, but understand that abortion is a grave matter and the law reflects it, something that'd likely look really weird to Americans.