Thanks for your comment. I am the GP commenter and in fact live in Switzerland, and this is one component of what I was implicitly referring to but I think your comment describes the situation more fairly than I implied. However, I think another aspect I might consider with respect to social conservatism are differences in immigration/integration and cultural diversity, as it seems both countries handle this somewhat differently given their relatively distinct histories.
> However, I think another aspect I might consider with respect to social conservatism are differences in immigration/integration and cultural diversity, as it seems both countries handle this somewhat differently given their relatively distinct histories.
Where does Switzerland stand on immigration and cultural diversity issues? I don't have your personal experience of the topic (and I'd love to hear you elaborate in more detail about that), but here are a few facts I know about:
* About a quarter of the Swiss population is foreign-born. That is very high by the standards of the Western world (the US is only around 13%), few Western countries would exceed that (Australia and New Zealand are the only ones I know of). So in that sense, Switzerland does have an openness to immigration which exceeds that of any other European country.
* Switzerland's rules around naturalisation are very tough. A lot tougher than most European countries, or most Western countries.
* In 2009 Switzerland amended its constitution (by popular vote) to ban new minarets on mosques. I think that's quite outrageous discrimination against a religious minority. In a country like the UK (for example), they'd probably never allow a referendum on such an offensive proposal. I think it violates the European Convention on Human Rights, as religious discrimination. But, the European Court of Human Rights declared a case against it inadmissible on the grounds that the complainant didn't have any personal plans to build a minaret. (If a Swiss mosque was to file a case, they'd at least get past that initial admissibility hurdle, but I'm not aware that they have.)
So overall I'd say Switzerland's record on immigration and cultural diversity is a mixed bag. There are some positive elements (the high percentage of foreign-born population) and some negatives (difficult naturalisation and Islamophobic constitutional amendments).
But before you try to say the US's record on these topics is better, just remember who is in the White House right now and what he has had to say on the topic of immigration and cultural diversity.
So it isn't entirely clear to me who actually comes out in front in a comparison of Switzerland and US on this topic. And, consider also there are 40+ other countries in Europe, some of which arguably do better (in some areas) than Switzerland does on these issues, others have their own serious problems in those areas.
Switzerland is just much more homogeneous, we do have 4 different languages (with associated cultural differences), but there has never been the sort of tensions or outright discrimination as there has been in the US with black people.
But, having lived in Switzerland for most of my life, I unfortunately feel that there is a very strong undercurrent of xenophobia, to the point that parts of it are even accepted among more left-wing circles.
If you look at the history of Switzerland, there have been multiple civil wars between Catholics and Protestants, from the 16th through to the 19th centuries. So tensions have certainly been there for much of Swiss history.
That ended in the 19th century, however, and in the 20th and 21st centuries, those religious tensions are not what they used to be. (That's not something unique to Switzerland; most European countries, religious tensions people used to kill each other over, nobody cares about any more. Here in Australia, my grandfather told me how as a Catholic in the 1940s, he couldn't get certain jobs because some employers refused to hire Catholics, and the law let them get away with that. But, I've never heard in contemporary Australia of someone refusing to hire a Catholic, indeed nowadays it would be illegal for a secular employer to do so.)
Certainly you are right, that however bad Catholic-Protestant tension may have been in Swiss history, it still was nothing compared to the treatment of African-Americans.
