Europe will continue to keep on ticking just fine, despite the hysteria some people have that the Muslims will slowly take over Europe.
Certainly there are some areas that some of Europe is doing better than the US. The US drug laws are horrible and that is the leading reason our prisons are such shit. I suspect your better medical stats is because of some of your better social programs (which still aren’t great, but better in some ways.)
But when people want the US to be more like Europe, especially when it comes to gun control or our supposed out of control violence, I think it is a very valid point that much of Europe enjoys much more cultural homogeneity - at least within their own nation (of course you guys have been fighting nation vs nation for forever plus a year). That stability and lack of conflict, lack of discrimination and lack of negative history is of course going to make Europe different than the US. (not to say Europe doesn’t have some of that as well, but most Western Europe nation have much smaller minority/foreign populations). I think your social programs also have a positive affect on crime.
I find it very interesting when you throw in ~100,000 refugees and suddenly they are faced with culture clashes that many in the US are more accustomed to, and they lash out just as some in the US do. Perhaps worse in some ways. I have seen the white power cross on more then one European sign.
It illustrates no one is “better” than one another. We all fall victim to some of more more base human traits. It is easy to claim superiority when you are in your Ivory Tower.
I am waiting for the calls to outlaw knives (‘think of the children!’ ‘high-capacity serrations!’), and for the ‘high powered rifle’ to be identified as a .22 or a regular hunting caliber/style. If it was one of those ‘extra-killy’ ARs, it would’ve already been identified as such.
I’m confused by the headline… rampage killer attacks?
Not to make light of the situation, but as far as I can tell by trolling a variety of media sources, nobody’s confirmed killed other than the knife wielder in the first attack.
Why sensationalize the headline? It just makes me trust boingboing that much less.
I would refer to somebody who attempted to kill as a killer.
A writer who attempts to sell a novel is still a writer even though they didn’t hook any publishers.
Edit: perhaps it should be qualified as “unsuccessful killer”
Sorry, but this is so far from reality, that I don’t even know where to begin. European nations are far from homogeneous, never have been, nor will they ever be. There is not a single nation state in Europe with a homogenous population unless maybe the 20 000 people in Andorra…
I have a Bavarian brother-in-law, who considers anything north of Bavaria alien territory and refused to go to a colleague’s wedding because it was near Berlin. Most Northern Italians consider Napels to be the devil’s country and wouldn’t venture there if you paid them. They have deep seated resentments against anyone from the South. Regional prejudices are alive and well. The disintegration of Yugoslavia was just the most recent bloody manifestation of how deeply enshrined hatred of the other is.
Belgium hasn’t had a government for years because the French and Flemish speaking Belgians can’t get along. Scotland wants independence, the Basques’s are planting bombs…
Point being the relative European peacfulness has little to do with national homogeneity and a lot to do with a relatively decent, and until recently a relatively equal standard of living, but now I am back to socialism…
