Okay, two problems with this.
- ) You start off talking about Western Europe, but by the end, to prove your thesis, you’re increasingly relying on examples from Eastern Europe. I think when people talk about Europe as a political standard for progressiveness, they’re talking about Western Europe, no? It seems like you started out by highlighting this distinction and then you let the two run together
- ) Throughout, you’re conflating the attitudes of the general public with those of the elected politicians. The structure of US democracy, with its electoral college and rampant voter suppression, is so unhealthy that elected officials tend to be entrenched conservatives who lag far behind the public. Maybe ordinary Americans are more racially tolerant than the French, but French politics and the political spectrum in Western Europe as a whole is far to the left of Americans. Single-payer healthcare, minimum wage and union rights are considered far-left positions in the US, but in most European social democracies, they’re common sense centrist positions. America has no Labour Party. The closest analogue to the Democrats in the UK is the Lib Dems, a marginal party. Angela Merkel, considered a center-right politician in Germany, would be on the left in the US. You can really only make the case that Americans are more progressive in any way than Europeans is by completely ignoring a crucial dimension that this evaluation rests upon. Also, it should be noted that environmentalism is a “left” position only in the United States.
I think your take on abortion rights is way off base as well. The right to an abortion is guaranteed under the constitution, so maybe on paper, southern states have less restrictive laws, but the tactic the American right pursues involves restricting access to the point of nonexistence. Missouri for example only has one clinic serving the whole state, and come February that could be reduced to zero.
I didn’t look too deeply into your claims about religiosity, but I’m not sure those data can be taken at face value either. Maybe other countries have more believers or are more observant on average, but American religious conservatism is a whole different breed, especially evangelicals. Around one-fourth of Americans adhere to a literal interpretation of the Bible. That can lead to some wild beliefs. I used to be one.
