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Comment by timoth3y | Hacker News Reader

> Freedom and individualism (however shallow) is emphasized.

It's really not though.

By Western standards, America is a very conformist country. You can see this in how schoolchildren are required to pledge allegiance to the flag, to the slow acceptance of gay rights, to controversy over saying over "Happy Holidays."

I deeply wish America was a country that supported individualism in the sense of supporting and even celebrating the right to live your life as you see fit.

All too often, however, it seems that this love of "individualism" only surfaces when someone needs help or asks for cooperation.

That's not individualism. This simply selfishness.

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> slow acceptance of gay rights

Huh? Many US states legalized same-sex marriage before other Western democracies like France, New Zealand, Germany, etc. What exactly was slow?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-sex_marriage

From the link you provided and countries you mentioned, the year when same-sex marriage was legalized:

France: 2013

New Zealand: 2013

United States: 2015

Germany: 2017

Other European nations began legalization as early as 2001.

Individual states, provinces, and cities might have acted sooner, but lets compare apples to apples.

The ultimate authority for marriage law in the US is the individual States, the Federal government has no jurisdiction so the poster you are responding to was comparing apples to apples for all practical purposes.

An inordinate number of laws in the US are de facto “national” only because all States recognize similar laws, not because there is actually a national law. The Federal government doesn’t have the authority to enact most laws. It is the same reason the US does not have a national ID, why corporations are solely creatures of individual States, and why public health policy is decided by States (see: COVID).

New Zealand (Population: 4.8 million): 2013

New York (Population: 8.49 million): 2011

With populations like that, I think that is comparing apples to apples.

It took decades of advocacy for marriage to be legalized. Even if this was faster than other western democracies, it still seems fair to criticize the process as slow.

https://xkcd.com/1431/

"By Western standards" as in you can point to other countries that are clearly more individualistic or do you mean by the measure of Western philosophies of the concept of individualism??

I don't think there is a philosophical agreement on what constitutes "individualism", so I won't try to speak to that.

However, for the purpose of this discussion, we are talking about a society's relative tolerance of individuals choosing to live their life the way they wish and a relatively weak emphasis on social conformity.

I'm sure someone has done proper quantitative research on this, but offhand, I think the Netherlands would score pretty high.

P.S. I used "Western standards" to differentiate from developed Asian nations like Japan, Korea, and Singapore which are more conformist.

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