Why's America more conservative than other Western Nations? Plus party challenge

[Torie]

It's more religious is probably the single most salient factor.

[Torie]

Well it depends on how far you take the structural explanation. To explain everything? No, I quite agree; that does not work. Here we have to look at social factors, political traditions and so on. But as you rightly point out most of the special factors that apply to the United States also apply to Canada, and this is where the structural explanation suddenly comes into its own.

Canada is far less religious than the US isn't it?  And it didn't have the slavery history, or racial history, that the US does, which has had such a profound effect, and still does, on American culture and politics.

[Torie]

Canada is far less religious than the US isn't it?  And it didn't have the slavery history, or racial history, that the US does, which has had such a profound effect, and still does, on American culture and politics.

The religious explanation can be thrown out (i.e. at the start of the twentieth century socialist politics had not trouble at all establishing itself in some regions with a profoundly religious dominant culture) and while Canada did not have those issues, it had some pretty significant ones of its own. Which have traditionally been brought up whenever the weakness of socialist/labour politics in Canada is contrasted with Britain/Australia/NZ.

How about later on?  My impression is that the US has retained its religious intensity more or less over the course of the 20th century, while it waned in Northern Europe. Around 1900, there might have been considerably less of a difference.

[Torie]

For those who think religiosity is a red herring, does heterogeneity have something to do with it? If a society is quite homogeneous, then there is more empathy perhaps, and less focus on viewing other groups as a problem, or a source of competition, or a threat, deflecting from economic equality issues. Better to keep the blacks, or Irish or whomever down vis a vis oneself, rather than focus on lifting up the less fortunate as a whole.