Liberty vs. Equality

Americans (particularly conservative Americans) tend to value liberty more than equality, while Europeans tend to value liberty and equality as more or less equal in value. What can we say about the differences to these two views? Is one better than the other?

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[digitalkarri]

You explain things really well. Thank you so much for helping me understand.

[kayedal-haddad]

Equality of Outcome or Equality of Opportunity?

[RamTough]

I think that you left out the third value: stability
Personally I value liberty over everything

[ezekiel]

Hello! Realist, thank you for wonderful video. I am coming from Europe and I will try to explain our point of view. First of all, we have no opinion. People in Europe generally have no interest in politics. Why? Because we live in society run by governments. We don't have to think about anything. In some countries, after a company breaks up,  employers can not dismiss employees without finding them another job (I made a proposal they also had to find girlfriends to those who can not do it by themselves ;) Needless to say, such way of living makes men castrated. But why we have anything against America. Simply because we are jealous. Not so long ago, we had colonies, we had enormous wealth, glamorous cities which were centers of the world. And what do we have now? Only shadow of that. Only which we can say is good is economy (in some countries).  And because we can not say it is better than American, we say we divided money properly. We are righteous, and Americans are racists, greedy capitalists who have no heart nor culture. Besides that, they are shallow, vulgar, stupid and uneducated. Well, some of these objections might be true, but nothing can kill the fact. Europe is dead. It lives in it's past. And it goes to it's final destruction before it meets it's resurrection some day in future. And how to explain an European that equality is not good? Just point at history. Europeans started 2 world wars, they had communism, fascism, socialism, couple of civil wars and revolutions. All in 20th century! And now, we have an immigration problem. So, who created better society? Sapienti sat. And I recommend, wholeheartedly, book "From Immigrant to Inventor" by Michael Idvorsky Pupin, great scientist who came from Europe to America in late 19th century. It shows that some of the differences existed even at his time and how he overcame them. I would like any of today's immigrants are like him.

[petefranklin]

So a few questions:
1. Would you say that as a generalisation that democratic in the US is pro equality > liberty or is pro both?

2. In NZ, govt probably works better being single tier. So in the US, i imagine each state presents its own slant towards liberty and/or equality. Which makes me wonder what unites the US ? Is the constitution pro liberty or equality in particular?

[ernestmitchell]

Someone said Trump is trying to turn teh Republicans to the European Right.