There is talk of the Europeanization of America bringing the nation into a more modern era. Some parts of the country are already Eurocentric. This is very apparent in New York where many people only travel between there and Europe and nowhere else.
But what makes some communities Eurocentric. To begin with culture is a prime indicator. The belief that it takes a village to raise a child, a village to care for a person, a village to build a nation is very Eurocentric. In Europe the social good comes before the individual.
In New York for instance we have a very large safety net caring for our people with 49 government workers for every 1,000 people which is 21% higher than the national average. It is also a place where healthcare is considered a right not just a privilege.
And this is nothing new. Even before our government began caring for people individuals did so as well. The New York Public Library and the Metropolitan Museum of Art are to prime examples of institutions created by wealthy individuals. You can go a step further to current day events at Carnegie Hall or Lincoln Center where wealthy benefactors are listed in the musical events’ performance programs.
You can take this even another step further to public TV where donors are regular people not just the wealthy. Yes the middle class does a lot to support PBS. And this is no fluke for public TV grows as TV itself grows offering more and more programming to compete with commercial TV.
But nowhere is this Eurocentric social compact more apparent than in CUNY and SUNY New York’s higher education systems that offer highly discounted tuition opportunities that were once even free or nearly free rivaling California and even Europe.
Yet non Eurocentric beliefs manage to creep into our way of life and the result is decline. These beliefs include extremely smaller government, low taxes that cater to the individual rather than the greater whole and more expensive education.
Yet overall the scales in New York and other Eurocentric communities tip towards Europe with the result being that these places are leading America into the future.