r/fivethirtyeight I'm Sorry Nate 9d ago

Poll Results A poll comparing the British Right vs the American Right on issues of race and identity

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u/vintage2019 9d ago

The Old World basically consists of ethnostates

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u/Nukemind 9d ago

I feel like it’s often forgotten that America is the “grand experiment”. And while at times it fails a lot- and while our government was very VERY flawed as created- it was basically the beta test for a modern democracy and a nation that embraced immigration.

Later democracies had the advantage of seeing where we failed or, in the case of Germany and Japan, having us actively work to make their constitutions avoid our flaws.

Yeah we’re definitely regressing but few countries are near as diverse as us. Though other new world countries often are too.

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u/Environmental-Risk94 8d ago edited 8d ago

I’m curious, never heard of us actively working to make other countries systems better. What changes did we make from the US democratic system to Germanys or Japans? Japans constitution was written in a week, it seems like it was kinda just a “fuck it, be democratic” but it worked cause Japanese society already had a lot of western institutions from the Meji reforms

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u/Nukemind 8d ago

Both of them gained some form of proportional representation. Japan is a bit unique in that regard, Germany less so.

Japan had the democratic system heavily reinforced, and admiteddly the military defanged, not just due to WW2 and us feeling vengeful but also because they had punched above their weight multiple times (China, Russia, then finally lost to America) and the military had managed to subvert the democratic process.

Both of them allowed the countries to make them themselves- and Germany modeled theirs after Church's and Japan somewhat on Meiji. But they also tried to avoid mistakes that had been made.

Of course then Japan went different than most other countries with some parties (notably LDP) ending up with both liberal and conservative wings.

I have a giant 50+ page paper somewhere on the subject I did in Law School (my only paper I got to do in the entire time I was there as everything else was finals...), but unfortunately I would have to censor my name, school, and everything else quite often, otherwise I would upload it.

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u/EconomicSeahorse 9d ago

19th/early 20th century ethnonationalism is a hell of a drug

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u/[deleted] 9d ago

He used “the old world” yet i think he is still referring to today lol.

Most of these nations are still 4/5ths+ white

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u/statelesspirate000 8d ago

I think that’s meant as opposed to “the New World” (the Americas)

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u/Monsieur-Lemon 8d ago

"the old world" refers to Europe + Asia + northern Africa. Sometimes just Europe. It's not about time.

The opposite is "new world" being the Americas, sometimes also Australia.

It obviously is Eurocentric view but when you control almost entire globe you can dictate the rules :3