I went to a great event last night that two friends of mine, John Caplan and Gordon Gould, started a couple of years ago called Citizen Table. The events, which are sponsored by The Week magazine, are essentially an excuse to get some interesting people together and talk about things outside of traditional topics of jobs and politics. Last night's topic was the impact of the upcoming British elections on America. It was moderated by Sir Harold Evans (who recently published a very interesting book on innovation and invention in America), and pitted Sidney Blumenthal against a guy named Andrew (I'm embarrassed that I didn't catch his last name).
There was a lot of the standard stuff about liberal values vs. conservative values, etc. and in many ways the conversation could have reminded an audience member of similar discussions about American races. However, there was one striking difference. Religion and "values" were simply not issues. At one point someone asked about this, and the answer from both sides was that "these really aren't British issues" and quite matter of factly, that "In Britain, religion has no place in politics - faith is just something that people keep to themselves."
I wondered about this a lot throughout the rest of the evening. Why is it that two countries that are seemingly similar on many other issues, can be so different on this one critical issue? How have the two populations evolved to view this so differently?
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