RELIGION AND CULTURE MATTER

What the world values, in one chart

VOX

Updated by Brandon Ambrosino on December 29, 2014, 1:00 p.m. ET @BrandonAmbro brandon@vox.com

The more globalized our world becomes, the more we learn about similarities and differences that cut across all cultures.

These things are sometimes easy to trace on a small scale. For instance, it's easy to chart the religious differences between, say, Indonesia and China. In 2000, 98 percent of Indonesians said religion was important to them compared to just 3 percent of Chinese citizens who said the same thing, according to WVS. But not every cultural comparison is that easy to make.

Two professors, however, are finding ways to compare how our values differ on a global scale.

Using data from the World Values Survey (WVS), professors Ronald Inglehart of the University of Michigan and Christian Welzel of Germany's Luephana University comprised this amazing Cultural Map of the World.

The Ingelhart-Welzel Cultural Map of the World. (NB: the green cluster in the center of the map is unmarked, but is labeled South Asian.)

What you're seeing is a scatter plot charting how values compare across nine different clusters (English-speaking, Catholic Europe, Islamic, etc.). The y-axis tracks traditional values, versus secular-rational values.

What do those terms mean? According to WVS, traditional values (the bottom of the y-axis) emphasize religion, traditional family values, parent-child ties, and nationalism. Those with these values tend to reject abortion, euthanasia, and divorce. On the other hand, those with secular rational values (the top of the y-axis) place less preference on religion and traditional authority, and are more accepting of abortion and divorce.

The x-axis tracks survival values versus self-expression values. Survival values emphasize economic and physical security and are linked with ethnocentrism and low levels of tolerance. Self-expression values, according to WVS, "give high priority to environmental protection, growing tolerance of foreigners, gays and lesbians and gender equality, and rising demands for participation in decision-making in economic and political life."

WVS offers this admittedly simplified analysis of the plot:

... following an increase in standards of living, and a transit from development country via industrialization to post-industrial knowledge society, a country tends to move diagonally in the direction from lower-left corner (poor) to upper-right corner (rich), indicating a transit in both dimensions.

However, the attitudes among the population are also highly correlated with the philosophical, political and religious ideas that have been dominating in the country. Secular-rational values and materialism were formulated by philosophers and the left-wing politics side in the French revolution, and can consequenlty be observed especially in countries with a long history of social democratic or socialistic policy, and in countries where a large portion of the population have studied philisophy and science at universities. Survival values are characteristic for eastern-world countries and self-expression values for western-world countries. In a liberal post-industrial economy, an increasing share of the population has grown up taking survival and freedom of thought for granted, resulting in that self-expression is highly valued.

The map, known as the Inglehart-Welzel map, was published in 2010, and was based on data published by the WVS between 1995 and 2009. The WVS "is the largest non-commercial, cross-national, time series investigation of human beliefs and values ever executed," according to its website. It's been around since 1981 and has surveyed over 400,000 respondents in more than 100 countries.

Congreso de la Nación Argentina / Argentine National Congress - Buenos A...

HOW DO YOU EVALUATE OBAMA?

5 WORST U.S. PRESIDENTS OF ALL TIME

by Robert W. Merry

THE NATIONAL INTEREST,

November 5.

In the spring of 2006, midway through George W. Bush’s second presidential term, Princeton historian Sean Wilentz published a piece in Rolling Stone that posed a provocative question: Was Bush the worst president ever? He said the best-case scenario for Bush was "colossal historical disgrace’’ and added: "Many historians are now wondering whether Bush, in fact, will be remembered as the very worst president in all of American history."

The Wilentz assessment was probably a bit premature. It is difficult to judge any president’s historical standing while he still sits in the Oval Office, when political passions of the day are swirling around him with such intensity. And yet the Founding Fathers, in creating our system of government, invited all of us to assess our elected leaders on an ongoing basis, and so interim judgments are fair game, however harsh or favorable. 

Which raises a question for today: How will Barack Obama be viewed in history? Will he be among the greats? Or will he fall into the category of faltering failures?

Before we delve into that question, perhaps some discussion would be in order on what in fact constitutes presidential failure and how we arrive at historical assessments of it. First, consider the difference between failure of omission and failure of commission. The first is when a president fails to deal with a crisis thrust upon him by events beyond his control. James Buchanan, Abraham Lincoln’s predecessor, comes to mind. He didn’t create the slavery crisis that threatened to engulf the nation. Yet he proved incapable of dealing with it in any effective way. In part this was because he was a man who lacked character and hence couldn’t get beyond his own narrow political interests as the country he was charged with leading slipped ever deeper into crisis. And in part this was simply because he lacked the tools to grapple effectively with such a massive threat to the nation.

But, whatever the underlying contributors to his failure, there is no denying that his was a failed presidency. It was a failure of omission.

A failure of commission is when a president actually generates the crisis through his own wrong-headed actions. That could describe Woodrow Wilson in his second term, from 1917 to 1921. He not only manipulated neutrality policies to get the United States into World War I but he then used the war as an excuse to transform American society in ways that proved highly deleterious. He nationalized the telegraph, telephone and railroad industries, along with the distribution of coal. The government undertook the direct construction of merchant ships and bought and sold farm goods. A military draft was instituted. Individual and corporate income tax rates surged. Dissent was suppressed by the notorious Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, who vigorously prosecuted opposition voices under severe new laws.

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One result from many of these policies was that the economy flipped out of control. Inflation surged into double-digit territory. Gross Domestic Product plummeted nearly 6.5 percent in two years. Racial and labor riots spread across the land. The American people responded with a harsh electoral judgment, rejecting Wilson’s Democratic Party at the next election and giving Warren G. Harding, hardly a distinguished personage, fully 60.3 percent of the popular vote. In addition, Republicans picked up sixty-three House seats and eleven in the Senate. The country has seen few political repudiations of such magnitude.

That’s failure of commission. Although historians have given Wilson a far higher ranking in academic polls than he would seem to deserve, it’s difficult to argue with the collective electorate when it delivers such a harsh judgment. If we assume that our system works, then the electoral assessment must be credited with at least some degree of seriousness.

Getting back to George W. Bush, his foreign policy would almost have to be considered a failure, and it was a failure of commission. He wasn’t responsible for the 9/11 attack in any meaningful way, of course, but his response—sending the U.S. military into the lands of Islam with the mission of remaking Islamic societies in the image of Western democracy—was delusional and doomed. One need only read today’s headlines, with forces aligned with Al Qaeda taking over significant swaths of territory within Iraq, to see Bush’s failure in stark relief.

In addition, Bush’s wars sapped resources and threw the nation’s budget into deficit. The president made no effort to inject fiscal austerity into governmental operations, eschewing his primary weapon of budgetary discipline, the veto pen. The national debt shot up, and economic growth began a steady decline, culminating in negative growth in the 2008 campaign year. The devastating financial crisis erupted on his watch.

It’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that Bush belongs in the category of the country’s five worst presidents, along with such perennial bottom-dwellers, in the academic polls, as Buchanan, Franklin Pierce and Millard Fillmore. Harding also occupies that territory in these polls, but it’s difficult to credit such an assessment, given that he quickly dealt successfully with all the problems bequeathed to him by Wilson and presided over robust economic growth and relative societal stability.

Thus do we come to one man’s assessment (mine) of the five worst presidents of our heritage (in ascending order): Buchanan, Pierce, Wilson, G. W. Bush and Fillmore.

Is it conceivable that Obama could descend to such a reputational depth? It depends, in large measure, on the outcome of the effort to salvage and bolster the president’s profoundly troubled Affordable Care Act. There’s no doubt that, in domestic policy, the Obama presidency will be defined by that single issue. And, if it destabilizes the nation’s health-care system and the overall economy to the extent that some are predicting, the president’s historical reputation will be severely affected. And this failure, if it emerges, will be viewed as one of commission, not of omission.

On the other hand, if the Obamacare system is righted and the country ultimately manages to transition smoothly into a new health-care era, the president’s historical reputation will be salvaged. As it appears now, absent some powerful new development in American politics (which never can be ruled out), Obama’s historical standing will rise or fall with Obamacare.

But one thing we know: Neither the judgment of history nor the judgment of the electorate will be rendered with any degree of sentiment or sympathy. As Lincoln said, "Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. We…will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation."

Robert W. Merry is political editor of The National Interest and the author of books on American history and foreign policy. His most recent book is Where They Stand: The American Presidents in the Eyes of Voters and Historians.

Image: White House/Flickr.

Editor's Note: This piece was posted in January and is being reposted due to popular interest. 

EUobserver / EU foreign policy chief seeks new 'debate' with Russia

EUobserver / EU foreign policy chief seeks new 'debate' with Russia

SYRIZA FAVORITO EN ELECCIONES GRIEGAS DEL 25 DE ENERO

ELECCIONES PRESIDENCIALES EN GRECIA »

Grecia tendrá elecciones anticipadas el 25 de enero al no elegir presidente

El primer ministro anuncia que los comicios serán el 25 de enero

• El adelanto electoral tensa los mercados europeos

MARÍA ANTONIA SÁNCHEZ-VALLEJO / CLAUDI PÉREZ Madrid / Bruselas DIARIO EL PAIS, MADRID29 DIC 2014

 teóricamente era sólo un trámite parlamentario, la elección de presidente de Grecia, se ha convertido en el mayor cataclismo políticovivido en el país desde el inicio de la crisis económica, tras dos intentos fallidos previos para elegir al jefe del Estado que han atizado la inestabilidad y los temores de Bruselas y la troika y que este lunes han conducido definitivamente al país a las urnas, en convocatoria anticipada, al concluir la elección presidencial sin resultado. Las encuestas pronostican que la izquierdista Syriza ganará esos comicios, que serán el 25 de enero.

Al Ejecutivo de Samarás le resultó por tanto imposible granjearse más apoyos pese a su llamamiento del sábado, cuando apeló a la responsabilidad de los legisladores para “evitar la aventura” de las urnas. Ahora el Parlamento será disuelto en un plazo de 10 días a partir de este lunes, para a continuación convocarse elecciones. El primer ministro ha anunciado que los comicios serán el 25 de enero, en la primera de las fechas barajadas. Mediante votación nominal en voz alta, en un agónico goteo de nombres divididos por circunscripciones, los 300 diputados griegos se han pronunciado a favor o en contra del único candidato a la jefatura del Estado, el conservador Stavros Dimas, excomisario europeo y varias veces ministro de Nueva Democracia, el partido del primer ministro Andonis Samarás. Dimas había sido propuesto por el Gobierno (que reúne sólo 155 escaños), y, a diferencia de las dos vueltas anteriores, necesitaba esta vez 180 votos. Ha logrado sólo 168, los mismos que en la segunda votación, el pasado día 23. En sus primeras declaraciones a la salida del Parlamento, Dimas ha manifestado a los periodistas que esperaba este resultado, y ha subrayado que "lo único importante ahora y siempre son los intereses de Grecia, en favor de los cuales todos deben trabajar juntos con sangre fría", la misma, ha asegurado, con que ha recibido el resultado.

Las encuestas apuntan a un triunfo de la izquierdista Syriza, con el 28% de los votos, y a una debacle del bipartito Nueva Democracia —el partido de Samarás— y los socialistas del Pasok, que han ostentado el poder durante cuatro décadas de cómoda alternancia.

La retransmisión en directo de la televisión pública Nerit, con un cintillo en el que podía leerse “elección de presidencia o urnas”, ha sido una sucesión de barridos sobre el hemiciclo con un marcador inscrito en la pantalla, a modo de partido de fútbol, en el que figuraban las dos únicas opciones posibles, Stavros Dimas o “parón” (presente, a modo de voto blanco, la opción de 132 parlamentarios); desde los primeros votos ha quedado claro que era una elección a degüello y que Dimas no sería elegido.

Bruselas ha reaccionado templando gaitas, después del apoyo explícito a Samarás del presidente de la Comisión Europea, Jean-Claude Juncker (que prefiere ver "caras conocidas, no extremistas" en Atenas) y del comisario Pierre Moscovici, que hace apenas dos semanas daba por hecho que el Gobierno griego tendría apoyos suficientes para la elección presidencial. Este lunes se ha comprobado que ese apoyo no existía. Y la cara más probable con la que se topará Juncker a partir de febrero será la de Alexis Tsipras, el líder de Syriza, que encabeza las encuestas.

A mediodía, Moscovici ha lanzado un escueto comunicado en el que la Comisión —el brazo ejecutivo de la UE— manifiesta que es "el pueblo griego" quien debe decidir su propio futuro, y subraya el "fuerte compromiso" de Europa para "el necesario proceso de reformas favorables al crecimiento que será esencial para prosperar de nuevo dentro de la zona euro". Ese dentro de la zona euro está ahora de nuevo en cuestión: los mercados han sacudido duro a Grecia a lo largo de toda la jornada, y los analistas coinciden con Bruselas en que un Gobierno liderado por Tsipras sería negativo para la estabilidad tanto en Grecia como en la eurozona. Pero ni los mercados ni Bruselas votarán el 25 de enero, y lo que Moscovici llama "reformas favorables al crecimiento" han sido ahora varias rondas de dolorosa austeridad que se han llevado por delante casi una cuarta parte del PIB de Grecia, han disparado la deuda pública hasta el entorno del 170% del PIB y, pese a la incipiente mejoría de los últimos meses, mantienen tasas de desempleo dramáticas, en torno al 25%, solo equiparables a las españolas en toda Europa.