Questioning authority (British and American differences)

I remember back in the 1980s when I shared a house with the American poet, Lyman Andrews, who worked as an American Studies lecturer at Leicester University at the time.  He used to really make fun of what he saw as the British tendency to obey authority without question.  He saw it as virtually a form of instinctive sheepishness.  His theory was that you only had to behave like a figure of authority and British people would obey you without question. 

Part of Lyman’s attitude came from his own rebellious personality (he was a raving alcoholic, openly bisexual, and loved to behave outrageously) but mostly it was cultural, I’d say.  His assertion that Americans are far more likely to question authority figures is almost certainly true.

British people are brought up from a young age to respect authority and there is a reverence for rules and laws that can mystify many other cultures.  (There is, of course, the British yob/hooligan subculture which delights in deliberately breaking rules, but they are the exception that proves the rule).

The advantage of such conformity, of course, is that Britain is essentially a very stable society and hasn’t had as many destructive upheavals as our European neighbours in the past two hundred years, or extremist governments, for that matter.  If you want something changing in Britain, you are supposed to go through all the proper channels and at some point in the future, it might or might not happen – in the meantime you are supposed to endure things as they are – which can be somewhat frustrating to say the least!  Another criticism of the British attitude (that even Brits themselves will often acknowledge), is that there is a general reluctance to complain about anything, a fear of “kicking up a fuss”, even when people are treated in an obviously rude, or poor manner – such as getting a bad service in a restaurant. 

American’s value their freedom, which is a good thing.  But the American attitude towards authority isn’t always entirely healthy either, in my opinion.  At the extreme, many Americans can seem distrustful to the point of paranoia at times, when viewed from a British perspective.  Conspiracy theories (many of them positively outlandish) about the government and other public bodies abound in the US.  There is also a tendency sometimes for rants about the Bill of Rights and the US Constitution to be invoked for trivial matters like getting a parking ticket.

My American wife doesn’t quite agree with me on this next point, but I would say that generally speaking, the US authorities allow more freedom, but if you cross the line, they come down on you much heavier and in a more pedantic way than in the UK.  In Britain, there is a tighter overview of things, but there is a more pragmatic approach taken by people such as the police and other officials and much of the time you can be let off for transgressions, even when you have clearly broken the rules.   In some ways, the overall net effect of the US and British systems are the same, but how they go about things can be quite different.

I would also say that although joking around with officials such as customs officials and the police can often be a tricky game to play, I personally suspect that you can get away with an awful lot more in the UK.  US officialdom doesn’t take any crap, basically.  As American writer, Bill Bryson says: “I had also got used to the idea that here (in Britain) you can make quips all the time and in America that can be very dangerous. I wrote about it in one of the books. Once I was going through customs and immigration in Boston, and the guy said as I went past "Any fruit or vegetables?" and I said "OK, I'll have four pounds of potatoes if they are fresh" and it was like he was going to take me off and pin me to the floor.”

If my wife is anything to go by, Americans tend to be troubled by things such as the number of CCTV cameras that exist in the UK, which are seen as an infringement of privacy (I don’t like them much myself either, but I am generally outnumbered by other Brits who tend to see them as deterring crime).

There is also a big fuss here in the US at the moment about airport security checks – although I do suspect that part of the difference in attitude is that in the UK, where domestic terrorism has been a major problem for longer, the security has been incrementally increasing over decades, so we have got gradually accustomed to it - whereas the US had very little internal security before 9/11 and then lots after, so many people resent suddenly being searched after traveling more or less unhindered for years.

Brits, on the other hand (well, certainly me), are disturbed by what seems like an extraordinarily high amount of people who are incarcerated in the US.  7% of all Americans are locked up in a jail at any one time, which is the highest documented rate for any country in the world according to Wikipedia.  I know that the US has lots of problems with violent crime, but it just doesn’t seem right for a democracy to lock up so many of its own people (even if there is popular support for it).

I guess my overall view would be that the US can seem paradoxically both a bit more anarchic and a bit more authoritarian than the UK, if that sounds possible?  Maybe “authoritarian” is bad word usage, maybe it’s better to say that the authorities just seem harsher.  I guess it’s also worth noting that Britain is fairly extreme in that the police aren’t evenly routinely armed, so that is the kind of “norm” that I come from!  (Of course, many in the US and some on the rightwing in the UK would just say that Britain was just too soft and a “nanny state”).

Freedom of speech in the USA (compared to the UK)

Here are some of my thoughts and impressions on freedom of speech after living in the USA as a British expat for a time (note that although there are many similarities, for the sake of comparison, I am focusing on British and American differences).

Anyway, generally speaking, I would say that freedom of speech in the USA is seen pretty much as an absolute and the vast majority of Americans are proud of it.  They are also scared of losing it, however, and many, if not most, Americans across the political spectrum appear to believe that freedom of speech is under constant threat and has to be defended.  Were freedom of speech to be compromised in any way, according to many Americans, it would be the beginning of the end of it. 

In the UK, on the other hand, people are genuinely proud of freedom of speech, but is seen as a slightly more relative idea and generally dealt with in a more pragmatic way.  British people also tend to just take their freedom of speech much more for granted than Americans do and there is no particular fear of losing free speech generally, certainly not in the way that Americans appear to fear its loss.  The idea that it is a free country and you can say what you like is deeply ingrained in the British psyche, I would say, but there isn’t a great deal of passion in relation to it generally - in fact the British attitude seems virtually apathetic compared to the USA. 

Metaphorically, I would say that Americans see freedom of speech as a very solid thing, rather like a canon ball (or maybe a brittle canon ball that can be broken if roughly treated?), and the Brits see it as something a bit more squashy, like a bean bag.

Hate Speech

One of the main ways that freedom of speech is perceived in a subtly different way in Europe, compared to the US, is in regard to extremist politics.  Pretty much all European countries have laws against stirring up religious, or racial hatred and people generally  perceive this as a necessary evil, rather than an infringement on their rights.  The reasons why these laws are there are fairly obvious, when you consider that historically so many European states were ruled by Nazi or fascist governments during the 1930s and 40s.  This means that there is an underlying fear of rabble rousers stirring up hatred against minority groups and causing social disorder or worse, especially in countries like Germany and Austria.  Britain has relatively mild laws on hate speech, but they are still there.

America was founded by people who had either experienced religious or political persecution, or wanted to do their own thing.  So American ideas on free speech are more shaped by that experience.  World War II also had a different impact on the USA to Europe. 

It is also true to say that the American constitution was a positive assertion of freedom of speech as a value, whereas in Britain it was an historical development, with freedom of speech being achieved by default through restrictions being gradually removed.  (Until the European Human Rights Bill was sealed into UK law recently).

Koran burning

Out of all the places that I could have chosen to live in the USA, by chance I happened to end up in Gainesville, Florida, where the notorious Koran burner, Terry Jones and his church, the Dove World Outreach Center are based (the group are actually atypical of Gainesville, which is a liberal college town).  It was interesting to see how the Americans handled the situation.  The first time round the media blew up a storm and top American officials ended up almost pleaded with them not to burn the Koran, with top army officers and even the president trying to persuade them of their folly and the potential damage they could do to US troops and US’s image abroad.  In the end, Terry Jones called off his first book burning.  The second time around, however, the media and officials more or less ignored the book burning and it went ahead with limited publicity. 

In the UK, on the other hand, when there was a similar book burning by extremists and film of it put on Youtube, the people who did it were arrested and charged with inciting racial hatred.  The differences in approach are pretty stark.

Summary

Overall, although I respect absolute free speech, I am probably still more at home with the pragmatic and relativist Brit approach at the end of the day.  Some parts of US culture are difficult for me to understand.  For instance, why the US allows publicity seeking hate groups like the Westboro Baptist Church to operate directly at funerals of young soldiers who have died.  I accept that they should be allowed to express their view of the bible, no matter how distorted and disturbing they may appear, but why it is so essential that they have to do it so close to a funeral is difficult for me to grasp.  I mean if they were forced to demonstrate two miles away, rather than under grieving relative’s noses, would it really signal the death of free speech?  (Having said that, Britain has had its own problems with radical Muslims launching demonstrations at funeral homecoming parades held for British troops who have died in conflicts abroad.)

I guess the strength of the American approach to free speech is that because it is very nearly absolute, there is little room for it to be chipped away or reinterpreted in a way that reduces it.  The weakness of it might be (at least from a Britisher’s viewpoint) that it can appear to pander to extremist elements and publicity seekers at times.