Zeitgeist
I admit that it took me a while to decide what Z topic
to talk about. My initial thought was to make the topic Zebra Crossing, which
is a striped speed bump seen throughout the UK. I was going to simply show the
photo below and leave it at that.
I later decided I wanted a bit more substance, but was
having a hard time coming up with a Z word that had any relevance to my Britain
trip. Ultimately I settled on Zeitgeist.
For those that don’t know, zeitgeist means “spirit of
the age” or “spirit of the time”. It refers to the dominant school of thought
that influences the culture of a particular place at a particular time. In this
post I will be concentrating on the prevailing British zeitgeist as it relates
to freedom.
While traveling across Scotland, England, and Wales,
my sense was that I was in a free country. Our tour bus traveled about without
governmental checks. We had to show our passports upon our initial entry into
the country in Glasgow, Scotland, but I do not recall having to show them ever
again, even when crossing borders into England and Wales. We traveled across a
lot of rural areas and visited quite a few urban areas. Mostly, I felt about
the same as I do when traveling across the United States. The main difference I
observed was the accents.
Despite the overall decline of freedom around the
world over the last few years, Freedom
House still lists the UK and the US as free countries. When
it comes to economic freedom, the US has been declining rather quickly. We are
now no longer listed among the Free nations. Rather, we are listed as Mostly
Free by The
Heritage Foundation. Only six countries are listed as free. The US is now
at number 12. The UK is slightly less free at number 14. It is sad to me to see
countries like Chile and Estonia being ranked higher in economic freedom than
the US.
Two social areas of freedom of interest to me are gun
control and healthcare.
Here in the US, gun control has been a topic of hot
debate for many years. Some would like to outright ban guns for ordinary
citizens, only allowing the police and the military to have them. Others point
out that criminals would still have guns even if they were all banned.
Therefore, as long as the criminals have them, honest citizens need them for
protection. From what I have read, Britain is further down the road on banning
guns. They are still available, but my understanding is that it is more
difficult to get a permit there than in the US as a whole. In fact, when we met
Baron
Dafydd Wigley in Wales (see my post on Xenophobia), one of the
things he said was that the Brits simply don’t understand the US’s lax position
on gun control.
Another area where Britain is further along the social
trail is healthcare. Publicly funded healthcare has been around for years now.
Interestingly, several people I encountered seemed to not like this. They
pointed out how those with enough money also bought private insurance because
the public system was inadequate in some ways. I think the biggest issue is the
waiting time for certain tests and procedures. This is similar to some of the
complaints coming out of Canada. While every Canadian I’ve talked to about
their healthcare seem to like it, there are those times when Canadians have to
travel to the US to get a test sooner than their system allows so that any
necessary treatments can begin earlier rather than later.
Let us hope that in the midst of Britain, the US, and
other free countries moving more and more down the socialist path, we will love
freedom enough to stop before we lose control of our lives as has happened in
too many countries around the world.
