It’s a Euro Thing
If one were to collate European criticisms of Americana and then compare them to reality in Europe, well, sure confusion results. Some random thoughts about another visit these next two weeks in Europe.
1. We Americans, we are told, are violators of freedom and have shredded our Western heritage through Guantanamo, the Patriot Act, and detentions.
But if one were to assess rationally the degree of privacy and freedom in Europe, by any fair margin it proves far more the police state. There are far more municipal surveillance video cameras. On the highway flashes go off, as computerized cameras snap pictures of speeding motorists who set off their sensors. Bus drivers must find ingenious ways to hide their hours logged driving, as they insert their computerized cards into their ignition to start their motors. All that seems unimaginable in the US.
2. Grasping Americans? The last few weeks I have stayed at some top hotels in the US while speaking. Internet service was usually around $10 to log in on Wifi. The pool and gym were of course gratis.
Here? Hotel internet service can run about 20-30 euros for a mere day. There are additional fees to use the gym or pool at most hotels. Read your bill carefully at restaurants; most require some “correction” as the waiters inadvertently add things not ordered. In short, money and its acquisition seem on the brains of almost everyone you meet.
3. Health conscious Europeans? In France and Luxembourg this week, I tried to count the obese among an average of every 10 or so on the street. The result? Americans seem no fatter than Europeans.
Smoking? I don’t know the statistics, but each time I come over here I notice immediately that it is far more common and socially acceptable. As far as the incidence of meat consumption, and the size of servings, I sense no difference, only that food is about double what it is in the states.
4. Repugnant American culture? The television has nothing much but dubbed American old movies and current television series. Fashion, music, and popular culture are usually American derived. America may run a massive trade deficit with Europe, but American trade names are everywhere.
5. American decline? The French and German newspapers are full of scare stories about their own fuel costs, price-fixing and the loss of national treasure. Scandals involving mortgages and bank collapse are common. In other words, Europeans share the same anxieties about finance and energy as we do—despite having much of the oil and banking industries nationalized or at least carefully state monitored.
The Cauldron of Europe
The region along the French-German border is beautiful, rich and understandably disputed for over 2,000 years. We Americans have a long history with it as well. My mother’s cousin Holt Cather is buried at the American cemetery at Hamm. Not far away at the Meuse-Argonne battlefield, my paternal grandfather was gassed in the first World War. My late cousin Dick Davis came through Luxembourg with the 3rd Army. And so it goes for most Americans, whose ancestors came here under much different circumstances that we do today.
We rightfully give the European Union credit for stopping the historic bloodletting for two generations. But two qualifiers. First, it was birthed because of the American-led destruction of fascism; and preserved only by the American-led resistance to the Red Army.
Second, the price for peace has been a sort of Lotus-eater society of long lunches, obsession with fashion and “nice things”, and secular worship of the God Leisure. In their abhorrence at the old catalysts of strife—nationalism, patriotism, religion—the Europeans have failed to see that national defense, religious belief, and pride in culture need not lead to endless war, but in fact to a healthy society that is content not to expect heaven on earth.
If the EU Needs the US, and We Become Another EU, then where’s our U.S.?
Today the French here are striking over threats to raise the retirement age back up to 62, and to reconsider the 35-hour work week. Lost in the discussion is any notion that there is not a “they” out there to shake more money from—only themselves. Europe, for all its socialism and egalitarianism, seems a sort of lottery society, in which each union, each age cohort, each EU collective recipient, in a game of musical chairs, tries to outwit the other—the pie finite, its pieces endlessly resliced.
I have admiration for the European Union’s unmistakable achievement in avoiding war for half a century, and its widespread prosperity—but it has come at a price. Given what Barack Obama has said about raising taxes, funding new entitlements, yielding to international consensus abroad, and seeing Americans in terms of various racial, class, and tribal constituencies, all with justified grievances, I think his notion of our future is what we see in European today—even as the Europeans grow increasingly restless about unions, high taxes, and their impotence in the world abroad. Apparently even two-hour lunches, no children, no church, no military, good food and the disco can get boring.
A note on Obama: in minute one, Euros gush; in minute two, the questions come; in minute three, they express concern (if they think you too might as well and so can be candid); in minute four, you sense they understand there is only one EU. So should the US become one too, they worry about who might play the US to the US?
In a sick way this speaks well of Obama: by his intent to turn the US into something like the EU, he is scaring some elites in the EU as never before. There can only be one socialist union: it requires a capitalist wide-open trading partner and a Nato-like ally to offer it free defense as well as an easy target for cheap invective. So the Europeans hint: “Please, don’t become quite like us—we need you as you are.”
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12 Comments
Ron Kean:Europe. Over the past year I was obsessed with World War I. Verdun, Gollipoli, and Passendaele were unbelievable and the Somme was worse. Mons and the first battle of the Marne were slightly comforting if I can say that. Maybe like Jews with persecution burned into their souls, Europeans are suffering trauma that is beyond our imagination.
But it’s nice to know that even under the thumb of the press, invisible leaders and Islam, some are still able to reason.
My father went in with Patton’s army. He captured a couple of Germans but he said they were young. And he was early twenties.
Who could take the America’s place? China…they never ventured much out of China. Islam? They’re in downtown Teheran and on mountain slopes in NW Pakistan. And Saudi Arabia is throwing money at it.
Somebody…somebody is going to be sitting in the oval office in January. I wish the right wing would just quit whining and put a damn McCain bumper sticker on their car.
May 23, 2008 - 5:01 pm vb:You could have added that in the musical chairs game of constituencies, each time the music plays, another couple of dozen regulations get added to the pile.
Two additional items from EUtopia: Naples is sinking in garbage, and there is a diplomatic crisis between Hungary and Slovakia.
The only positive thing about an Obama presidency would be watching the Euros try to figure out his next move. And perhaps the fact that they couldn’t criticize him because that would be racist.
May 23, 2008 - 5:23 pm ~Paules:Europe has become decadent. There’s no other word for it. They are like trust fund babies living off the capital accumulated by previous generations. And why not consume it all? If demographic trends continue, there won’t be a next generation of Europeans anyway.
America for all her faults still leads the world in all the social and economic metrics that matter. Rather ironic that we get no credit for being the only true multi-racial, religiously tolerant, open and free society on the planet. We are the utopia, as far as such a thing is possible, that other nations aspire to be.
America hasn’t finished her run in the great marathon of history. We are Rome in the middle years of the republic. Young and bold, sometimes arrogant, but always resiliant. Innovation, free enterprise, and liberty count for much. We hold the hand in spades. Oohrah!
May 23, 2008 - 5:37 pm TLM:John McCain seems to be testing the water for the fall campaign by focusing his latest attacks on Barack Obama’s inexperience in foreign policy, the test case being, of course, Obama’s ill-advised strategy to talk to our adversaries without preconditions and apparently at the highest levels of government. Obama’s position on this matter originated as a gaffe made by him multiple times late last summer, and which he now prefers not to disown. We could probable beat this one to death (does he plan to hold discussions with Osama bin Laden? If not, why not, etc), and I hope McCain does. But if this works for McCain, I would suggest another foreign policy Obamism be revived for public consumption. Recall a few months back, Senator Obama said, as president, in the event of actionable intelligence he would be willing to insert Special Operations Forces into the NW Frontier of Pakistan to take out Al Qaida leaders (I guess, only the ones he doesn’t want to talk to). Go back a few months earlier and you can read in the NYT that this same option had been vigorously debated at the Pentagon back in 2005 and rejected. In discussing his plans for withdrawal from Iraq, Obama has assured us that as president he would set strategic policy and leave the tactical considerations to his generals. Killing Al Qaida’s leaders has been part of our strategic policy in the GWOT since about 12 September, 2001. So, nothing new here, other than a feckless 47 year old junior Senator with no military experience wanting to dictate tactics to the Pentagon. General Obama’s apparent willingness to risk young men’s lives to accomplish a task more experienced military officers would assign to a lifeless drone, like the Predator, should be added to McCain’s growing list of naive and arrogant Obamisms
May 24, 2008 - 7:36 am M.E.:For me Europe is a painful topic, because I am European, though I was born in Moscow, but Moscow was always an European capital, even in the worst communist days. I lived many years in Italy. I know well Spain, France and Germany. And I feel myself in this Europe as an ancient Roman who sees his World destroyed by barbarians. This Europe doesn’t create more. All is tired here: even anti-Americanism is tired, automatic and repetitive like phrases uttered by an electronic puppet.
May 24, 2008 - 10:08 am TLM:Dr. Hanson relates a very good example of European (not only French) mentality: “Today the French here are striking over threats to raise the retirement age back up to 62, and to reconsider the 35-hour work week.” What does it mean? The Western Europe (the Eastern Europe is another topic) is “la planète des singes” where people don’t want to work, to think, to defend themselves. With Obama the US risks to become “la planète des singes” like Europe. I don’t believe that this squalid individual has any chance to win. I am not fortune-teller. A fortune-fate is something irrational. There is the “theory of probability” that deals with irrationals factors. But these probabilities or irrational factors are a deviation from the fundamental laws. And when deviations substitute laws we have pure chaos.
So only an ill society can “freely” elect an irrational personage like Obama as its leader. I return always to J.-F. Revel’s books on the US. He tells that all liberals and leftists in the US and Europe were sure of McGovern’s electoral victory, and when Revel expressed some doubt, all considered him a fool. I haven’t sufficient elements to judge Nixon as politician and personality, but McGovern’s defeat had very clear meaning: the American society rejected, like rotten meat, this cheap demagogue. Carter was an absolute nonentity, but his election had rational explanation. The liberal media was hysterically anti-Bush in 2004, but the majority of the Americans had sanity to elect great Bush and not insignificant Kerry.
Does a history repeat? On the base of historical precedents, we can say yes, but in what concrete form it’s impossible to predict. There are same new factors that make this new-old story extremely dramatic. I believe that the American society will reject also this new McGovern. I have seen a documentary film about private inventors of new means to travel in the Space independent from NASA. I was enchanted by the creativity and originality of these men. You can find nothing like this in Europe. This America of bold pioneers and inventors is that I love and admire. For me it is the real America, not a surreal of demons’ worshippers like Farrakhan, Wright and so on.
Hope to read more VDH postings from Europe over the next few weeks. I basically agree with Paules “trust fund babies” metaphor for Continental Europe. However, with the opening up of Eastern Europe the family is a little bit bigger, the funds won’t go as far and some Europeans may actually change their ways. I don’t think the new Administration under John McCain will be as dismissive of “Old Europe”so the level on the invective meter may be turned down. Under an Obama regime, the Europeans might want to start paying a little more attention to, and putting more money into, their Defense budgets. Unfortunately for them, Left-leaning Europhile American politicians would rather waste our tax dollars at home.
May 24, 2008 - 3:23 pm TLM:VDH’s Grant and Sherman article at RCP got me wondering why candidates no longer give speeches on America’s battlefields, particularly our first African-American candidate (to be). Gettysburg, of course, would be off limits. But what about Shiloh or Bull Run? Imagine Senator Obama poised on a stage set high above the fields at Antietam, looking out at thousands of bright, shiny, innocent faces gazing up at him in adoration, waiting for him to speak his magic. Nah. Not even Obama could stomach the thought of that joyous throng trampling on such hallowed ground, the historical significance lost on the lot of them. Better to let McCain give that speech.
May 24, 2008 - 6:44 pm RuleTopia:Let’s not mince words. Europeans as a group have grown much lazier, selfish/narcissistic, and cowardly in the last 100 years. They believe in nothing, and they stand for nothing but decadence. That’s why they are an afterthought in world afairs.
On their door-step in the Middle East and in their own ghettos sit hundreds of millions of resentful, intolerant, irrational Muslims who are more than willing to die for what they believe in. Guess what is going to happen?
May 25, 2008 - 12:26 am M.E.:To RuleTopia:
As an European I agree with you in substance. You exaggerate the number of Muslims in Western Europe. The highest Percentage is that of France (8.5% of Total Population) and Netherlands (5.0%). In any case the problem is very serious and show above all the weakness of European Governments that have always collaborated with the worst Asian and African dictatorships. Saadam Hussein was the best client of the French weapons industry. So it is comprehensible why France wanted to save the absolutely criminal Saadam Hussein’s regime protesting against the War in Iraq. All European politics can be reassumed in these words of the French foreign minister: “We have to talk with our enemies”. (Obama repeats the same. This is why this “European” that wants to become American President, is so popular in Europe.) Was this tendency completely inverted with the electoral victories of Sarkozy in France and Berlusconi in Italy? I am not sure, but French President’s wish to improve the rapports with the US is undeniable. Silvio Berlusconi was always a good ally of the US. Do not forget also pro-American chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel. So it is possible to speak about some change in Western Europe. The Spanish case is anomalous in all senses. The electoral victory of the Spanish Socialist Party that used the terrorist methods to gain the power was a national suicide. Here my information is direct, but it is another topic. I hope in restoration of our Western unity. This hope is very uncertain, but I cannot do otherwise.
May 25, 2008 - 5:34 am J.E. Dyer:We need to remember about Europe that without the security guarantees of the US, the EU could not have been formed as it exists today. If we had not kept forces in Europe after WWII, or formed NATO — measures which demonstrated our material stake in the political disposition of the continent — Europe’s longstanding patterns would simply have reemerged after the war. The reunification of Germany would have been essential to France and England, as a counterweight to the Soviet Union; and a reconstituted Germany would have seen herself insecure from all directions, and would have jockeyed against Russia for ascendancy over the continent, with England throwing her weight behind one or the other in the hope of preserving a power equilibrium. It is the presence of the United States, not the absence of history in modern Europe, that makes jockeying for each European nation’s own security unnecessary. Only because the US is the enforcer state can the nations of Europe embark on a union that posits between them an equality that quite obviously does not obtain.
The same is true of the Far East, where the Pax Americana obviates an otherwise inevitable power struggle between China and Japan, and to a lesser extent Russia.
The time for the US to look around for a great power, other than us, to enforce our own security structure, is now — not after we have succumbed to EU-ism. Not being located within a day’s drive of Moscow or Berlin, we have an ingrained national sense of invulnerability that can turn us silly on the subject of our own security. But the fact is that other nations can afford to not be at each others’ throats only BECAUSE of us. The EU has not done anything magical. It has made use of a security structure enforced by an outside party to create a more-butter/fewer-guns society.
We need not worry that we in America will even have the opportunity to try this. There IS no outside power enforcing our security for us. If America falls, we all fall — hard and fast.
May 25, 2008 - 1:58 pm TLM:I agree with the above comments. Our defensive umbrella for European and Asian democracies is a double-edged sword for us. It gives us some influence in the societies we protect, but at great expense to our own. It is a win-win situation, however, for them: low Defense costs and they are free to ignore our influence.
May 25, 2008 - 3:16 pm Steve Browne:You said: “We rightfully give the European Union credit for stopping the historic bloodletting for two generations.”
Do we?
For two generations Europe’s largest military force, more powerful than Western Europe’s put together, has been American.
A eunuch may not boast of his chastity. Lacking the means to war on their neighbors, and policed by an American occupying force, can the Europeans be justly credited with discovering how to live in peace amongst themselves?
Jun 13, 2008 - 4:45 am