>>i think it's american puritanism and religiosity v european
>>urbanity and freethinking. he has a point.
>>
>
>A very broad and moot one, then.

i'm not so sure. i mean, the suspicion towards high culture/metropolitan life/ shapes the us in everything from the difference in funding for the arts to transportation patterns.



>>are there european analogues to the importance of the
>>religious right in the us? the attorney general annointed
>>himself with olive oil at his inauguration, for pete's sake.
>> and i think the religiosity is intimately entwined with
>>anti-intellectualism and a suspicion of cities as sites for
>>secular learning. i mean, would "pointy headed
>>intellectuals" or dan quayle's foaming about the "cultural
>>elite" even be an insult in europe?
>>
>
>Well, it depends. If you're talking France or Poland, for
>instance. Jean Jaures or Maurras and the Action Francaise
>(and Le Pen, nowadays) .


yeah, but. i mean, the influence of le pen is far smaller than the influence of the religious right in the us. us policy is far more right wing than in france, definately on the national level. and on the local level -- do y'all still have fights over darwinism being taught in schools? murders of abortion providers?

the action francaise as far as i know (which isn't far) was a small party. and also, was it anti-paris, i.e. anti-metropolis? did it explicitly de-fund the cities at the expense of rural areas?

i wasn't saying that europe doesn't have its own religious/fascist/ parties, but that the religiosity and anti-intellectualism have been far more important in american politics. the suburbanization of america to an extent that didn't happen in europe happened bc cities never had the same place in the american imagination as in europe (see peter hall's cities of tomorrow).