That's a feature, not a bug.
> I wish we had a system like the USA.
You are missing the wood for the trees. The last thing you want in a country is an effective government that can push through it's majority agenda at the expense of the minority.
That's why EU countries are as a rule quite far ahead on the curve of progress, see: abortion, euthanasia, LGBT rights and so on.
It's also a way to keep religion out of government as much as possible, you won't see the separation between state and church in a country where the dominant political parties all have to nominally support the dominant religion.
So please, no system 'like the USA' in Dutch politics, though, you may get your wish soon enough. Personally I'd much rather have us adopt the very opposite, the Swiss system which requires a much more active electorate and a much more educated one too.
Except those are controversial with Americans. I'm not seeing how the system is to blame. Making the electoral process 'more democratic' isn't going to change that. It might make things worse ...
In my view, it is the discourse that needs to be fixed first. As long as your media keeps painting everything in black and white (and it is in their interest to do so, being part of the establishment), I don't think any electoral reform is useful.
We are very good at pretending that when we get "nothing", it is a temporary inconvenience.
The first amendment of our Constitution separates church and state, for whatever that's worth. You might want to suggest that to Ireland. ;)
On the whole, not really. 11 European countries constitutionally ban same-sex marriage for example, and less than half the countries offer any sort of legal recognition for same-sex couples.
Of course the problem when talking about 'Europe' is that you have a very wide spectrum of opinions. For every country that is ahead of the US on LGBT rights you have another that is very far behind.
Some country in Europe will pioneer a concept, others will follow, some faster some slower. The US usually catches on long after the concept has already become normal in a fair chunk of the EU.
As for your constitution, America gets it right on paper, but in practice God (the Christian one) is all over American politics, whereas even in Ireland it seems to be less of a day-to-day influence.
From a purely legal perspective not in any significant ways. However from a public opinion perspective the difference is more significant. Same sex marriage has ~90% approval rating in the Netherlands compare ~55% in US. I cannot imagine that those sorts of differences don't greatly affect the day-to-day reality living as a same sex couple.
On most day-to-day reality issues (for same sex couples or anyone else) local norms are probably much more important and I can assure you there are lots of parts the United States that have 90% approval rates for same sex marriage.
So if we are discounting the legal perspective (which just as a personal opinion, I wish the US federal law was more progressive), cherry-picking public opinion to match the more progressive parts of the sample seems like the US comes out about the same.
As for how NL is 'better' than the US: It's a ridiculously small country and very densely populated so what works here would likely not work as well in places like Canada or the US, but as mentioned above I think coalition politics (het poldermodel) is an important part of making sure that minorities do not easily become the football of dominating majorities. Both large US parties would be considered right-wing here (roughly VVD), the US has no functional left which is a residue of the McCarthy years and the cold war. Somehow the US associates 'left' in politics with 'communism' and that has kept a very large chunk of the US population without representation.
In NL it is very hard to find any substantial chunk of the population without representation. We also don't jail 1% of our populace.
That said there is plenty of room for improvement, we still have corruption, racism, crime and so on at levels higher than what I'm comfortable with, and our government is excellent at wasting money, an area they are slowly improving on but in my opinion too slowly.
Abortion was legalized in the U.K. in 1967, abortion bans were made illegal in the US in 1973, in France and Germany in the mid 1970s.
Sure some Scandinavian country might be ahead in those issues, but if Vermont was a separate country the US still wouldn't be behind. Also, this is really a great example of why the EU is such a terrible idea.
The Supreme Court threw out Arkansas's 12-week abortion law earlier this year. Two states have 20-week bans, and those are being challenged. Almost all states are at 24 weeks, and most have no mandatory counseling or waiting periods.
And on same-sex marriage: it became legal in France only shortly before Ogberfell, and and is still not legal in Germany.
Some other countries also still have this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_tax
And the sooner it dies out the better.
If abortion should be rare, than why not tax it.
People who say that abortion should be rare aren't saying that the procedure itself is bad. They're saying that unwanted pregnancies are bad.
I think we're all a lot better off not getting any further into the details on this.
Europe got their through politics, US through courts. How long do you think that would take if it was left up to politicians?
EU (esp. Scandinavia) has much, much more tight regulations of abortion, compared to English world, esp. Canada, which has none. As a socially conservative I consider this good.
Those proportional system compromises aren't half as bad.