Shaping America In Europe's Image

Piece in the WSJ by British politician and member of the European Parliament Daniel Hannan. Some excerpts:

"I don't think anyone doubts North American liberals view Europe favorably; sometimes more so than North America itself. Here in Quebec, as I often point out, our aim is to copy Scandinavia. It's a natural human thing to think the grass is greener somewhere else.

My guess is that, if anything, Obama would verbalize his ideology using the same vocabulary that Eurocrats do. He would say he wants a fairer America, a more tolerant America, a less arrogant America, a more engaged America. When you prize away the cliché, what these phrases amount to are higher taxes, less patriotism, a bigger role for state bureaucracies, and a transfer of sovereignty to global institutions.



He is not pursuing a set of random initiatives but a program of comprehensive Europeanization: European health care, European welfare, European carbon taxes, European day care, European college education, even a European foreign policy, based on engagement with supranational technocracies, nuclear disarmament and a reluctance to deploy forces overseas.


No previous president has offered such uncritical support for European integration. On his very first trip to Europe as president, Mr. Obama declared, "In my view, there is no Old Europe or New Europe. There is a united Europe."

I think the above passage speaks for itself. Notice how he asserts "uncritical support for European intergration." It's so, I think, because the ends justify the means. Why should we be critical if our hearts are in the right place?

Canada finds itself in the same spot. Those who critically question the universal welfare system are deemed to be "right-wingers" and not in line with Canadian "values."

It's nonsense of course. Who gets the monopoly on 'values?'

It's always good to assess incessantly about things. Especially when the state is telling people how society should be. President Obama is at a point where he feels compelled to tell businesses what their obligations ought to be.

"The critical difference between the American and European unions has to do with the location of power. The U.S. was founded on what we might loosely call the Jeffersonian ideal: the notion that decisions should be taken as closely as possible to the people they affect. The European Union was based on precisely the opposite ideal. Article One of its foundational treaty commits its nations to establish "an ever-closer union."

It's the first thing you learn in a European Union political science class. They do this by channeling sovereign power through to Brussels.

It's on the Jefforsonian model (who believe in a society ruled by yeoman), ironically, where socialists would probably have a fighting chance. Socialism can work; on a small scale.
However, for a population sample of hundreds of thousands - never mind millions - it's unworkable. It has no choice but to coerce people to fit into its model and in some cases, as we've seen in the 20th century, to the point of murder.

Now, I recognize an argument can be made that those who committed massacres and atrocities merely coopted the term socialism and held no real intention to implement it.

"Why is a European politician urging America to avoid Europeanization? As a Briton, I see the American republic as a repository of our traditional freedoms. The doctrines rooted in the common law, in the Magna Carta, and in the Bill of Rights found their fullest and most sublime expression in the old courthouse of Philadelphia. Britain, as a result of its unhappy membership in the European Union, has now surrendered a large part of its birthright. But our freedoms live on in America."

First off, my cousins in Europe have complained about the ceding of local culture to Brussels. In their view, it will be the undoing of the EU. In fact, neo-nationalism in Europe, if anyone cares to observe carefully, has an ugly side to it and remains a disturbing under current in cultural and political affairs. Every once in a while it surfaces but one can wonder, can it lead, ironically, to war sometime in the future?

Every now and then, I'm asked or even chastised for talking too much about America. Greek historians wrote about Rome, no? They were cataloging, commenting and observing Rome - the great power of the time. And so it is with Washington. America to me is exactly how this gentleman puts it. I really don't care if some Americans have jumped off this notion. In the bigger scheme of things, its the American ideal (up until 1776 man wasn't free) that carries Western civilization at this point as Athens, Rome, Florence, Paris, Berlin and London once did.

Americans seem to lapse into violent peaks and valleys making their existence complicated. It's part of the process I gather of perfecting their union. Right now, a cloud of cynicism, disappointment and divisiveness prevails over them. Does it mean it points to a permanent downward spiral?

I'm not convinced.

"You deserve better, cousins. And we expect better."
Americans aren't European. They aren't Swedish or Austrian.

That's fine by me.