Posted on 03/26/2009 8:13:24 AM PDT by Tolik
The question posed by social scientist Charles Murray at the American Enterprise Institute’s annual dinner this month could hardly have been simpler: Do Americans want the United States to be like Europe?
He asked as someone who likes and admires Europe and Europeans. He asked also because it is becoming increasingly apparent that restructuring the U.S. along the lines of the European social-democratic model is the change many in the new administration — perhaps including President Obama himself — believe in. Such a redirection surely deserves consideration.
Murray is convinced that Europeanizing America is a bad idea, and not only because the European model creates chronically “sclerotic economies.” More significant, he says, is the fact that embracing the European model means discarding the Founders’ revolutionary reinvention of government, and of the relationship between the state and the citizen. Murray argues this would inevitably “enfeeble” the habits and institutions that have been singularly responsible for making America “robust and vital” — an “exceptional” nation.
The intent of the modern European welfare state, Murray says, is laudable: to take “some of the trouble” out of life. Dealing with troubles, he concedes, is not always easy or pleasant, but it can lead to satisfactions accessible through no other means. It is how people’s lives “make a difference.” By contrast, those relieved of important responsibilities tend to while away their days “as pleasantly as possible.”
If amusement becomes “the purpose of life, why have a child, when children are so much trouble — and, after all, what good are they, really? If that’s the purpose of life, why spend it worrying about neighbors? If that’s the purpose of life, what could possibly be the attraction of a religion that says otherwise?” And so, in Europe, one sees a diminishing work ethic, catastrophically declining birth rates, a dwindling sense of nation and community, and empty churches.
I would add this: Such a society is no match for the challenge of radical Islam, a surpremacist and aggressive political/religious movement with ironclad convictions about every aspect of life, and adherents willing — in many cases eager — to kill and die in pursuit of their vision.
Murray has not explored the national-security implications of Europeanization but, coincidentally, John Bolton, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, addresses precisely that topic in a new essay in Commentary magazine. He notes in particular that “foreign-policy eminences here and abroad, including former Secretaries of State of both parties as well as defense officials from the Clinton and first Bush administrations” are now advocating to Obama that the United States emulate “the European Union (EU) as the new model.”
Such an approach would require that Washington achieve “transnational consensus” for foreign policies it wishes to implement. It would mean replacing the traditional American concept of sovereignty — U.S. citizens governing themselves within the framework of the U.S. Constitution — with something called “responsible sovereignty,” a euphemism for ceding sovereignty to the United Nations in the interest of building a “cooperative international order” and, in time, “global governance.”
Bolton argues that following this course would make America, by design, weaker, while strengthening “international organizations, which have, time and again, proved inefficient and ineffective.”
More fundamentally, this would mark a historic break with “the understanding of the U.S. Constitution, which locates the basis of its legitimacy in ‘we the people,’ who constitute the sovereign authority of the nation.”
Emulating the experiment now underway in Europe, in which nations “share” sovereignty even with non-citizens, Bolton adds, “by definition will diminish the sovereign power of the American people over their government and their own lives, the very purpose for which the Constitution was written. This is something Americans have been reluctant to do.”
But that’s the direction in which we now appear to be heading. Bolton contends that only “concerted action” can prevent it. The possibility that “irreversible damage will be done to the American project over the next few years is real,” Murray warns.
“The drift toward the European model can be slowed by piecemeal victories on specific items of legislation, but only slowed,” he adds. “It is going to be stopped only when we are all talking again about why America is exceptional, and why it is so important that America remain exceptional. That requires once again seeing the American project for what it is: a different way for people to live together, unique among the nations of the Earth, and immeasurably precious.”
Do a sufficient number of Americans still believe that? Given the failures of America’s educational system, do most people even understand the choice that is about to be made? And, even if they do, how many are willing to fight to prevent such a counter-revolution? There may be no questions of greater consequence asked and answered over the years ahead.
— Clifford D. May, a former New York Times foreign correspondent, is the president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on terrorism.
Nailed It!
Moral Clarity BUMP !
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Wow. That’s right on.
I love Cliff May. Adorable and has a beautiful mind.
“the understanding of the U.S. Constitution, which locates the basis of its legitimacy in ‘we the people,’ who constitute the sovereign authority of the nation.”
This should be plastered on billboards nation wide.
Denis Diderot
Apostrophe to the Insurgents, 1782
Sure is.
Frighteningly close to home and the author is correct, America has been losing her exceptional status for some time. Do enough Americans care to halt the slide? I suspect we will soon find out. A large part of the problem as I see it came with the pushing of a multicultural curriculum in the schools. The left conquered academia with hardly a peep and filled our children with wrong ideas about the nature of America, diminishing American Exceptionalism as an accepted historical school. As someone who is about to take his comp exams for an MA in American History, I subscribe to the American Exceptionalist view of history but I confess that I often wonder how much longer we can go on. The left collectively presumes that they are more intelligent than the Founders and no one seems to counter them. I hope to in the classroom soon...
And here's the irony of this whole thing. John Bolton is part of that "neo-conservative" element on the U.S. political scene that has spent much of its effort in recent decades implementing exactly this kind of "Europeanzation" nonsense all over the world.
The strongest political forces in THIS country -- in both major political parties -- are radically secular globalists. This is a recipe for disaster, in my opinion.
Bolton was a conservative before the brand “neo-conservative” was invented. His work at the UN was been above reproach.
September 11, 1998 Letter to Bill Clinton
I find it ironic -- and even a bit comical -- that Bolton would be running around today warning us about the "Europeanization" of the United States. HE is part of the problem here.
Regretfully, I must point out that you do your self no good posting egregious inaccuracies about Bolton.
Were Bolton in charge, America would have sent the UN to Elbonia. Minus, of course, any American funds.
Then please explain to me how John Bolton (of all people) ended up supporting a radical Islamic element in Kosovo against a Serbian nation that had supported the Allies against the Nazis in World War II.
America loses her exceptionalism = Atlas shrugs
Not to worry, though. No doubt Africa will step up and carry the mantle of freedom and prosperity into the future. /s
He fell for the propoganda of mass murder and the insane allegations taht if we did not step in Greece and Turkey would go to war.
That’s a poor excuse. You don’t sign an open letter to the president of the United States without having your facts straight.
In any case, if you have not already, I urge you to go read Bolton’s article linked in this piece. Very timely, and a penetrating analysis.
Driving home yesterday I was trolling through the talk shows, Hannity, Mike Medved, Steve Malzberg and I listened to them and their callers and i thought, “we are going to win this. We are going to take our nation back.” There was just a sense that something is happening, something coming together. I still can’t verbalize what i felt and feel, but articles like May’s reinforce the feeling. We will regain our country.
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