A European's Warning to America

Stephanie

Diamond Member
Jul 11, 2004
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wake up people.

SNIP:
By DANIEL HANNAN
On a U.S. talk-radio show recently, I was asked what I thought about the notion that Barack Obama had been born in Kenya. "Pah!" I replied. "Your president was plainly born in Brussels."

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.

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."

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Barbara Kelley
.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?

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

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."

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.

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.

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.

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."


read it all here.
Daniel Hannan: A European's Warning to America - WSJ.com
 
Good read. America is fast losing all the attributes of the people who strove so hard to make it the great country it used to be.

Rather than being hard working industrious people we have all but lost our work ethic.

Rather than a good education becoming more and more important and something to strive for in succeeding generations, we have now watered down, corroded, and made our education system a morass of stupidity - and the goals and dreams of preceding generations have become "I'm entitled to ... you owe me." No and yes - they are entitled to an education, but they owe it to themselves to strive for and work their butts off to get it - not to have it handed to them on a silver platter at the expense of everybody else.

Rather than having a strong sense of morality - a value and respect of right and wrong - we have slithered down to "if it feels, good ... let's further degenerate ourselves into the abyss of slime." We have devalued, if not almost completely lost, our sense of respect for ourselves and those around us.

Rather than being a country of freedom of religion, hope and faith there are those who take the position that because they don't believe in the existence of God, nobody else can believe it either and any expression of religion both public and private are fast disappearing.

Whatever happened to all those virtues, ethics, strengths, beliefs and determination that made us AMERICA?
 
LOL


So far Europe has given us taxation without representation, Mass murdering Communism, Colonization, Impealism, Small pox, the Nazi regime, current socialist poverty and the black plague.


I care what leftists think why?


:clap2:
 
LOL


So far Europe has given us taxation without representation, Mass murdering Communism, Colonization, Impealism, Small pox, the Nazi regime, current socialist poverty and the black plague.


I care what leftists think why?


:clap2:




Actually it was the Chinese who gave us the Black Death.
 
The only countries that are enviable are the ones outside of the EU.

Switzerland's individuality is something to be jealous of. A bit like their having the largest army in Europe, and the most authentic version of the original democratic models. The government doesn't operate without the authority of the people (by mandatory referenda).
 

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