A European's Warning to America

[TeePee]

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.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...582972608.html

An article by EMP Daniel Hannan for an American audience, which seems to ring very true to me as an expat. Will we soon see a United States of Europe? Are we already there? What does our national identity mean anymore?

[psdie]

Our freedoms live on? What, like the freedom for big media copyright holders to carry out wiretaps?

[TeePee]

Well done on reading the article. Oh well, I guess you got your 20 posts now.

[Rave]

Hannan comes across as the worst sort of Tory Boy. So I read this expecting to disagree with much of it. But instead I've just picked a bunch of massive holes.

American conservatives have struggled to press the president's policies into a meaningful narrative. Is he a socialist? No, at least not in the sense of wanting the state to own key industries. Is he a straightforward New Deal big spender, in the model of FDR and LBJ? Not exactly.

No. Neither were Blair and Brown- they were in favour of chucking tax money at private companies through PFIs, which is how we've ended up with such a massive deficit.

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.

Can't argue with this.

I don't doubt the sincerity of those Americans who want to copy the European model. A few may be snobs who wear their euro-enthusiasm as a badge of sophistication. But most genuinely believe that making their country less American and more like the rest of the world would make it more comfortable and peaceable.

All right, growth would be slower, but the quality of life might improve. All right, taxes would be higher, but workers need no longer fear sickness or unemployment. All right, the U.S. would no longer be the world's superpower, but perhaps that would make it more popular. Is a European future truly so terrible?

No, to be honest. look at Scandinavia.

Yes. I have been an elected member of the European Parliament for 11 years. I have seen firsthand what the European political model means.

No, you've seen the travesty that is the political structure of the EU- and I agree it is a travesty. That is no reason to decry the social democratic models of individual nation states.

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."

I don't like that either.

From that distinction, much follows. The U.S. has evolved a series of unique institutions designed to limit the power of the state: recall mechanisms, ballot initiatives, balanced budget rules, open primaries, localism, states' rights, term limits, the direct election of public officials from the sheriff to the school board. The EU places supreme power in the hands of 27 unelected Commissioners invulnerable to public opinion.

True.

The will of the people is generally seen by Eurocrats as an obstacle to overcome, not a reason to change direction. When France, the Netherlands and Ireland voted against the European Constitution, the referendum results were swatted aside and the document adopted regardless. For, in Brussels, the ruling doctrine—that the nation-state must be transcended—is seen as more important than freedom, democracy or the rule of law.

Yes- can't argue with this.

This doctrine has had several malign consequences. For example, it has made the assimilation of immigrants far more difficult. Whereas the U.S. is based around the idea that anyone who buys into American values can become American, the EU clings to the notion that national identities are anachronistic and dangerous. Unsurprisingly, some newcomers, finding their adopted countries scorned, have turned to other, less apologetic identities.

Erm hang on- when have Sikhs been shot or beaten to death in Europe? It seems that Americans are too stupid to distinguish them from muslims (or 'ragheads'), whereas we are not.

The single worst aspect of Europeanization is its impact on the economy. Many Americans, and many Europeans, have a collective memory of how Europe managed to combine economic growth with social justice. Like most folk memories, the idea of a European economic miracle has some basis in fact. Between 1945 and 1974, Western Europe did outperform the U.S. Europe happened to enjoy perfect conditions for rapid growth. Infrastructure had been destroyed during the war, but an educated, industrious and disciplined work force remained.

Human nature being what it is, few European leaders attributed their success to the fact that they were recovering from an artificial low. They convinced themselves, rather, that they were responsible for their countries' growth rates. Their genius, they thought, lay in having hit upon a European "third way" between the excesses of American capitalism and the totalitarianism of Soviet communism.

We can now see where that road leads: to burgeoning bureaucracy, more spending, higher taxes, slower growth and rising unemployment. But an entire political class has grown up believing not just in the economic superiority of euro-corporatism but in its moral superiority. After all, if the American system were better—if people could thrive without government supervision—there would be less need for politicians. As Upton Sinclair once observed, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it."

I more or less agree with this....

Nonetheless, the economic data are pitilessly clear. For the past 40 years, Europeans have fallen further and further behind Americans in their standard of living.

....but I sure as **** don't agree with this.

Oh right. Ask an American who lives in, say, urban Detroit how his or her standard of living has gone over the last 20 years.

Europe also has become accustomed to a high level of structural unemployment. Only now, as the U.S. applies a European-style economic strategy based on fiscal stimulus, nationalization, bailouts, quantitative easing and the regulation of private-sector remuneration, has the rate of unemployment in the U.S. leaped to European levels.

Erm....I would say that America led the trend in stupid credit, sub-prime etc., and then led the trend in state sector bailaouts. Such a policy was, and is wrong for sure, but to blame Europe for starting them is to ignore the facts, as far as I'm concerned. But then, Hannan, you are a politician.

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.

Meh- I'm getting too drunk now. Guantanamo, Department of Homeland Security, Scanners at every freakin airport- you're having a laugh, basically.

Until now. Nearly two and a half centuries after the Declaration of Independence, the grievances it adumbrated are belatedly coming true. Colossal sums are being commandeered by the government in order to fund bailouts and nationalizations without any proper parliamentary authorization. Legislation happens increasingly through what are called standing orders, a device that allows ministers to make laws without parliamentary consent—often for the purpose of implementing EU standards.

True. But, erm, is the Fed a model of probity? I don't suppose they've been debasing the savings of their citizens through Quantitative Easing, now, have they? Have you, Hannan, ever heard of Peter Schiff?

How aptly the British people might today apply the ringing phrases of the Declaration of Independence against their own rulers, who have "combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws."

So you can imagine how I feel when I see the U.S. making the same mistakes that Britain has made: expanding its government, regulating private commerce, centralizing its jurisdiction, breaking the link between taxation and representation, abandoning its sovereignty.

You deserve better, cousins. And we expect better.

We all deserve better, mate. But if you think the boat in America didn't leave under Reagan, you are a great theoretitician....and you have a truly crappy grasp of reality.

[TeePee]

Excellent!

The US standard of living is very varied. There are people here absolutely dirt poor, especially in some regions. (Actually some time on google will find some amazing pictures of the Urban decay). There is a similar variation in education, with some people demonstrating a spectacular level of ignorance. The average standard has moved toward an improvement, just as the average standard of education has improved.

As for Guantanamo, DHS, et al, these are more recent issues, and are exactly part of the problem. While the article attacks Obama, these represent runaway government departments that are using the politics of fear to seek expansion. There is a constant stream of anti-immigration spiel, calls for expanding the Border and yet in 3 years the Border Patrol has expanded from 4 to 24 agents on the Olympic Peninsula, a backwater on the Canadian Border. We hear all about violence and guns from the US sent to Mexico and yet nothing about the ATF deliberately supplying thousands of them to criminals in an attempt top boost their statistics.

The US has been on a trend of expanding government an federal powers for years, and 9/11 provided a huge excuse. This is the real danger of the centralization of powers. It's a power-grab but it's no more Obama's fault than Bush or Clinton.