| Summary: | So Where Does This Leave Us? There are, of course, differences between America and Europe. But in almost all cases, they are no greater, and oft en smaller, than the differences among European nations. The span of European circumstance is such that the United States tends to fall comfortably within it. Therefore, either no coherent Europe exists, or the United States is a European nation. Formulated in a more sensible way, the similarities across the North Atlantic are at least as salient as the divergences. Yes, there are differences between Europe and America: murder and incarceration rates, as well as gun ownership and, more arguably, relative poverty rates on the one hand; the strength of civil society, assimilatory abilities, and some aspects of religious belief on the other. Other differences are ones of degree rather than kind: social policy, taxation, labor regulation, inequality, environmental policies. Other much-remarked Atlantic divides can easily be exaggerated—the death penalty, for example. Popular opinion probably does not diverge across the Atlantic as much as official policy. A joint YouGov/Economist poll found almost identical responses between Americans and the British, with about one-fifth of respondents always in favor of death for murder and about the same number always opposed. The United States still enforces the death penalty, and most Americans support it under some circumstances. Yet, 12 states do not have it, and another five have not carried it out for the last 30 years. If we add those states that have executed only five or fewer people since 1976, we find that over half the states, in effect, do not have capital punishment. It could, in theory, be revoked tomorrow. Would America then be radically different? Did France change profoundly when it abolished the death penalty in 1981? Did the UK in 1998, Belgium in 1996, Spain in 1995, Italy in 1994, or Greece in 2004? Did they only then become truly European?
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