Note: Before you read (sorry it's so long... :-( ), realize that I'm not arguing, so much as I'm trying to explain, as you seemed to be wondering about the differences between Belgium and America and how that affects our perspectives.
I'm thinking that it would be good that we'd define some words before continuing on and try to use those terms consistently. Like what is culture...
Culture may be defined as the institutions, traditions, character, religion, creative output, and ideals of a society. In other words, the whole of what binds them together as a community.
<i>how can we compare it, what is the standard, what is the goal?</i>
How sophisticated are their intellectual and artistic traditions? How civilized are they? What is the moral health of their society? Do their people receive justice? How happy is the populace? Is their human thriving?
In America (or the US, more specific), there are two distinct political parties between which you can choose. They are more or less opposites of each other. Here in Belgium you have some 13 political parties for the country. Then you have the political parties for the Flemish side and for the French-speaking part.
Both parties in the US are "big tents." That is, while they each party has a rough correspondence to one side of the political spectrum or the other, they are each coalitions of many groups, built around a core of shared issues, parallel to the coalitions of smaller parties you get with parliamentary politics. So, a lot of the political process that would occur in the parliament, instead occurs more informally with in our two political parties and their organizations.
The overriding principle with in the American political system is this: that no one should have too much power. So, power at the federal level is divided between the three branches. Power is then further divided between the states and the federal government, who are co-sovereign entities. And then power is divided between the people and the government. The government has strong enough powers to do its job, giving the people justice, but narrowly defined, with checks and balances, to make sure the rights of the people aren't trampled on. The rights of the people are then broadly defined and strongly protected in our Constitution (backed up with a right to bear arms), which allows us to keep the government in line. Everything is kept in tension and balance, maintaining rights, the rule of law, and the fair dispensation of justice.
I am particularly fond of our Belgian social system, which is superior to the American system but less superior then that of the Scandinavian countries.
Strictly speaking, our federal/national government is not supposed to do much welfare spending. It's focus predominately of national interests, which is mostly diplomacy and war. Social spending is supposed to occur more at the local and state level, where the government is closer the people, making it more responsive to local needs and where it can be held more accountable for the money that it spends. Of course, the principle and the reality often diverge.
Historically, Americans have never liked the government spending their money, when they can spend it themselves, and often more competently (government waste is a perennial problem everywhere).
Historically, Americans have favored the free market for various reasons:
---People know their needs better than the government does and will spend money more efficiently and generally, more wisely, than the government. Governments, at every time and in every culture, have generally been less efficient and more wasteful with the money they have.
---People have a right to the money that they earn. There was a term coined by an American philosopher, (whose name escapes me) "the forgotten man," used to describe a scenario that goes like this: Man "A" and Man "B" see that Man "C" is suffering in poverty and get together to pass a law that will give Man "C" financial relief. But it's Man "X" who's forced to pay for it. He's the forgotten man, the one forced to pay the money.
---Voluntary action is better than being coerced. It's better to inspire charity than to force it. First, it is more just, allowing for a free will choice. Second, it emphasizes personal responsibility, both for the giver and receiver, as the personal aspect of giving creates gives a face to the money and creates a relationship of accountability. That relationship can also grow into something more substantial, as it may help the person get out of their situation, more than just money can.
---Conversely, the impersonal, bureaucratic dispersal of money and social services creates a faceless system that is easier to exploit and abuse, by both the government and the people receiving. In the case of the government, not only do you have wasteful spending, but money and politics often produces corruption, especially since they can now buy votes with social spending. But also the people receiving money can abuse and defraud the system, so a social safety net becomes and hammock, reducing the incentive to be productive.
---Where government begins doing and providing things for people, it reduces freedom, discourages personal initiative, and breaks down social bonds. Conflicts that would be settled face to face and with a handshake are drug into court. Things that would have been by people on their own or the community are now expected to be done by the government.
---With in the bounds of a healthy moral and legal order, we believed that it was the most efficient and equitable way of dispersing wealth in a society, as well creating it. It rewards productiveness and ingenuity. People create new businesses to sell new products and services, finding customers who need them. Where businesses are successful, they create jobs. Where businesses compete for customers, they drive down prices, and drive up wages when competing for labor. As people save, spend, and invest money, they in turn become producers and entrepreneurs.
Government can't create wealth, it can merely take it from those who are producing it and put it somewhere else. And it most cases, that merely creates an economic burden, because its reducing the amount of money for processes of economic growth: spending, saving, and investing.
An ever-expanding government becomes a tumor, of sorts. It starts out as healthy tissue--a government doing its job--but begins expanding, adding bureaucracy and creating new, unnecessary regulations and laws. As it expands, it draws in money and resources, it takes over private enterprises, and assumes new functions with in the community, causing community institutions to disappear. People relinquish their liberties and responsibilities slowly, expecting the government to do more and more. It draws all things into itself, draining the lifeblood away from a healthy society. Mildly, it tends to produce lethargy and mediocrity. It extreme it produces tyranny, as people become sheep. We've seen examples of this: Soviet Russia, Maoist China, North Korea, and so on.
That isn't to say some social spending isn't necessary or appropriate and local/cultural circumstances vary. A smaller country like Belgium has far less risk of that happening than a large country like the US. And we do have communities that have successfully lived in a more communal/collectivist fashion, such as the Mennonites, Amish, and Hudderites. But such collectivist arrangements work best in a tight-knit community with strong social bonds, where needs are known and accountability can be kept.
Yet the Social services are but an aspect of a society, and actually have nothing or little to do with culture. It has to do with politics and laws.
But politics and laws do have to do with culture. A country's political system and laws reflect its history (Who could imagine Britain without its monarchy? Who could deny the influence its parliament has had on world history?) and how it sees best to establish a civil order, which says a lot about its attitudes and values.
The Muslims also have a good social system, yet it does not come from the government. It comes from the Muslim faith. The Christians should have that too, as should the Jews, according to scripture.
Historically, when the Christianity was still healthy in America, most charity and social services occurred through the church, or through religiously oriented organizations. Even for the less religious, the Christian principle of charity and neighborly love tended to encourage giving. Even now, you see an echo of it. Americans give more money and donate more time to charity per captia to charity than any other Western nation.
So what is the ideal society ad what does it have to do with racial discrimination (because I feel that we might be digressing).
The ideal society is where one finds justice, civility, virtue, and human thriving in the context of community. The means this is arrived at is less important than the ends.
What is true multiculturalism? Only if we have that I will keep discussing. Because otherwise we won't be understanding each other.
In America, multiculturalism has meant cultural self-loathing. Every other culture, besides our own, is valued. Everything is reduced to moral equivalency, yet our culture is vilified for every dark thing in its past, while the good things are ignored. Our traditions, our history, and our culture are ignored, while kids are taught that every culture is fine and never to be "judgmental" about things they might see as barbaric. The irony is that they never actually learn much about other cultures or how to really understand them, in both the good and the bad.
"True" multiculturalism, as might call it, is about respecting the right of other cultures to exist and exercising humility in judging things, coming to understand cultures before we judge them and knowing that some things are just differences, not better or worse.
I believe God has caused cultures to arise as varied expressions of his image and glory, like different facets of gem. Every culture has its strengths, its weaknesses, its beauties, its peculiarities, its idiosyncrasies, and its eccentricities. But some cultures are more primitive and some cultures are barbaric, the latter particularly due to the universal problem of human sin, which twists the beauty that was present.
