“It happened that a fire broke out backstage in a theater. The clown came out to inform the public. They thought it was a jest and applauded. He repeated his warning. They shouted even louder. So I think the world will come to an end amid the general applause from all the wits who believe that it is a joke.”

What's funny is that when Stephen Colbert appeared on C-Span to talk about immigration reform, he stayed in character the whole time while easily giving the best speech I've ever heard on C-Span 3 (ok it was the only speech I ever heard on C-Span 3) and I think I laughed more than the audience in attendance.

Those weren't his best movies, no, although I will never stop loving Black Adder or Not The Nine O'Clock News.

Speech sucked? In style or content?

ps: you're a fartface

I was just following his sign!

I bite my thumb at you, sir.

Sorry, typing on my phone. The first sentence should of course read: "The things Americans you have British understood kawaii pony fart."

Yes, but no. American has tons of religious fundamentalists, some of them in extremely influential positions. Europe's population of churchgoers, in contrast, has been shrinking for a generation or two. There's nothing so blatantly pro-capitalist as the GOP in Europe, and Christian parties often lean the other way: in economic terms, their conservatives resemble our Democrats.

Yes, yes, yes: restrictions on hate speech and porn and all that. I don't believe that the United States presents the only model of free speech -- and Americans can still believe in it because our grandfathers weren't the ones who loaded the local Jews on cattle cars to concentration camps -- but it is worrying. But all in all, Europe's mainstream politics is much more centrist to center-left than the US, which is, like it or not, an increasingly capitalist, conservative country.

America's religious fundamentalists don't run the country. Britain's, do. The Anglican Church is literally part of the state. Our Christians don't ban porn (however much they'd like to), and, while we Americans are always hearing lurids tales about how some oddball Evangelists from The Wrong Part of The Country are making vague campaign promises about "laws against Sharia" - which would never actually be passed, let alone hold up to Constitutional scrutiny - in the UK such measures are actually taken seriously! We've got more chance of seeing the British government crack down on Muslim rights than we do of seeing the US government close Guantanamo Bay.

And as for Britain being center-left, well, that really depends on what you mean by "left". If you mean that the British government assumes the state should be as large as possible and should possess sweeping economic powers at the expense of small businesses and individual artisans, then yes, a case could certainly be made that the UK is "center-left" when compared to us. But if you're worried about something more abstract, like being opposed to Big Money on liberal grounds or being genuinely concerned for the welfare of those people affected by globalism and/or colonialism, then no, Britain is not particularly "leftist" at all. Margaret Thatcher was Ronald Reagan on crack-cocaine. Tony Blair was George Dubya with a nicer suit.

Britain is all about paternalism; it is the overarching value that permeates every level of society. They have much tighter social and moral restrictions, as well as far more monopoly-friendly economic regulations, when compared to us. For all of our problems, assuming that we view the world through a liberal lens, there is no sense in which the UK can be said to be less fucked than the USA.

The Anglican Church is indeed a part of the state, but it's a more moderate institution than many, many American flavors of Protestantism, and nobody goes anymore. Its influence on British daily life and politics has been in decline for generations. By contrast, the United States has a separation of church and state encoded into its legal structure, but the laws strain to control a forthrightly xenophobic population that would, I expect, prefer to live in some sort of capitalist Christian semi-theocracy. No push of this sort exists in Western Europe on a comparable scale, and while I know that some Britons really do admire the Bill of Rights, I'll take the first over the second any day.

On the second point, well, yes. Britain can be terrifically paternalistic and unfriendly to individual enterprise, and they tend to have more social restrictions than the US does. I'd argue that they've done a bit better at corralling some of capitalisms worst aspects and working to provide a basic level of economic and social security for their populations, but there are always trade-offs. A relatively slow-moving and bureaucratic state is one of them, but I'm not sure I wouldn't take it over the direction the US seems to be heading.