Copenhagen

Copenhagen is a city of about 1.6 million people. It is the capital of Denmark. It is the capital of the country that gave us the charming women's curling team that finished second at the Nagano Winter Olympics.

During the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, you might have heard the following argument, in one form or another:

Liberal: "In Europe, an affair like this would been regarded as ridiculously unimportant."
Conservative: "That's because European morality is lower than ours. If we don't impeach Clinton, it will show that we are just as perverted as the Dutch, or Danes, or French."

Gee. Who's right? Well, Danish women sometimes leave their offices at lunch time to sunbathe topless in the city parks. I guess that's pretty bad behaviour.

On the other hand, Copenhagen has about seven murders a year. New York City has about 1500. Of course, New York is ten times the size of Copenhagen, so let's make it a fair comparison. Copenhagen would have 60 murders a year, if it were the size of New York.

Which leaves you with a puzzle. If the Danes are so decadent, and so unChristian, why aren't they out stabbing, robbing, shooting, raping, and bombing each other into oblivion, like all evil people do? And if America is the last bastion of Christian morality in the so-called civilized west, why are American cities so violent and lawless?

I'll try to argue like a conservative for a minute.
1. Just because the Danes don't rob, murder, rape, or beat each other doesn't mean they're not leading lives of pernicious debauchery, and, therefore, actually leading more sinful lives than Americans do. They probably have more illicit sex than we do.
2. The population of Denmark is fairly uniform ethnically and socially. They don't have the class divisions that America has.
3. What do we care? We're bigger and stronger, so we're right. Besides, we don't believe you. You're probably playing a statistical trick on us. We can't prove you're wrong, because we don't know anything about Denmark and we'll never care enough to know anything about Denmark, but we're Americans, so we can be as stupid as we want to be.

Argument 1 implies, of course, that illicit sex is just as bad as robbery and murder, so can we dismiss that one as silly? The only argument that makes any sense, of course, is argument number 2. The trouble is, you have to ask yourself whether a nation that prides itself on its Christian heritage should go around bragging about it's class divisions and its inability to resolve them. So when Americans say, "You Europeans--- the reason you find our obsession with the Clinton scandal so laughable is because you are morally inferior to us!" the accusation rings a little hollow.

Conservative churches in the U.S. never tire of reminding us of how God blesses those who obey Him and follow His commandments. If America really is more faithful to Christian morality than continental Europe is, then why is its prison population bulging at the seams? Why does it have the highest infant mortality rate of the developed world? Why does it vote the same way on international treaties as China and Libya do? Why does it have so many more poor people, as a percentage of the population, than any other G7 nation?

Americans are generally a likeable people. They are generous, on a personal level, to a fault. They can be moved by compassion when disaster or misfortune strikes. They seem to have a strong sense of fair play.

And on the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, they consistently see things the way Europeans do. They don't believe that what Clinton did is worth all the trouble of impeachment. And they're right.

The funny thing is, if this really was an issue of Christian morality, why is it that Christian "leaders", like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and James Dobson, are so utterly devoid of the quality of mercy? Why are they so unwilling to forgive? Why did Jerry Falwell sponsor a video "documentary" on Clinton that is filled with lies, exaggeration, half-truths, and distortions, including ridiculous allegations that Vince Foster was murdered? (You have to ask yourself what kind of resources Jerry Falwell would have that Kenneth Starr didn't have?) Why are these leaders filled with so much hatred for the Clintons, especially Hillary?

December 26, 1998