SLUMMING FOR PRESIDENT
During their triumphant 1939 tour of Canada, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth took a brief detour south of the border to visit the Roosevelts at Hyde Park. It was the first time a reigning monarch had set foot on American soil, and to mark the occasion president and Mrs. Roosevelt introduced the royal couple to a local delicacy called "hot dogs."
THREE LITTLE WORDS
At dinner in Paris a couple of years ago, I was asked about “this American sickness with gunsâ€.
“Americans have guns,†I said, “because a lot of Americans like having guns.â€
My host scoffed. “A lot of people here would like to have guns, too. But they don’t.â€
“Exactly,†I said.
The difference between America and most of the rest of the world can be summed up in three words: “We, the people.†The Warsaw Pact had “People’s Republicsâ€, of course, but, when you call yourself a “People’s Republicâ€, you aren’t. Lots of political systems invoke “the peopleâ€, but very few trust them enough to live by it. For four decades in the Middle East, the likes of the House of Saud and President Mubarak explicitly sold themselves to Washington as anti-democratic brakes on the uglier inclinations of their subjects. Their argument was: okay, we’re undemocratic, but believe me with a crowd like ours you wouldn’t want democracy. If it was ever a persuasive argument, it isn’t now.
But that line isn’t confined to Araby. It’s standard in the new Europe, too – and not just at my elegant French dinner party. On June 13th, the Europe Union held elections, and, though between the Baltic and the Irish Sea there were significant regional variations, the key trends were this: low turn-out in some places, high turn-out for “Euroskeptic†parties in others, and big anti-government votes partout. The division in Europe is between the twin forces of Apathy and Hostility. Nonetheless, five days later, the leaders of 25 nations huddled in a Gauloise-filled room and emerged with a “European Constitution†– a blueprint for a Federal European state for which the election results of less than a week earlier had made plain they had no popular mandate.
To which my hosts in Paris would have shrugged: “So what?â€
The principle underpinning the new Europe is exactly the same as that advanced by King Fahd and his thousands of princes – not “We, the peopleâ€, but “We know better than the peopleâ€. We know better than them on guns and the death penalty and the Euro and constitutional arrangements, and pretty much everything else, including election results. When 29% of Austrian voters were impertinent enough to plump for Joerg Haider’s Freedom Party, thereby earning the unlovely nationalists a place in the governing coalition, the EU punished them by imposing sanctions on the country. As the Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson put it, “The program that is developing in Austria is not in line with EU values.†In the new Europe, the will of the people is subordinate to the will of the Perssons.
One sympathizes with the Continental elites. Last time, they let the will of the people loose, it gave them Nazism and Fascism, and militarism and genocide, all of which were hugely popular. So after the war the priority of Europe’s governing class was to constrain the masses. In the current Wilson Quarterly (as in Woodrow), Professor Jed Rubenfeld of Yale makes the case that it was America which essentially invented the means to contain European nationalism – by concocting “a new system of international law and multilateral governanceâ€. As Rubenfeld argues, “The internationalism and multilateralism we promoted were for the rest of the world, not for us.â€
There’s a measure of truth in this. The paternalistic arrangements Washington promoted for post-war Europe would have been unacceptable at home in a republic founded on popular sovereignty. But therein lies the irony. Ever since Karl Marx sat in the Reading Room of the British Library in London writing Das Kapital, all the most destructive anti-western ideologies have been invented in the west. In the dining rooms of agreeable Ivy League colleges, they fret about imposing western values on the developing world but not a whit about imposing anti-western values, all of which were developed in the west – from Communism and Fascism to subtler grievances like “neo-colonialismâ€. Even Islamofascism is at core a traditional European-style political totalitarianism that’s cannily exploited a structural weakness in Islam and taken it for a ride. I’m not saying Islam itself isn’t hugely problematic. I tend to agree with Churchill on the curses of Mohammedanism – “fatalistic apathy… improvident habits… degraded sensualism…â€, etc – but it took a Fascist politicization to make it a global threat.
What’s happening in Europe today is a refinement of western anti-westernism. A system of remote, unaccountable, post-nationalist, pan-continental institutions urged upon the Continent by America has become the principal vehicle for anti-Americanism. “A politically united Europe will be a stronger partner to advance our goals,†insists Strobe Talbott. Tell it to Mr Persson, the aforementioned Swede, who says the purpose of the European Union is that “it’s one of the few institutions we can develop as a balance to US world dominationâ€. Sweden was famously relaxed about Nazi world domination and Soviet world domination, but even in the chancelleries of Stockholm there comes a time when the threat is so unspeakable you have to get off the fence.
The EU is not a “balance to US world dominationâ€. Indeed, it will have difficulty dominating its own backyard. The multilateral panaceas and US security blanket imposed on Europe have led it to its present paradoxical state of militantly pacifistic anti-American moral equivalism. There are lessons here - alas, too late for Europe to learn, but not for America.
National Review, July 12th 2004
http://www.steynonline.com/index2.cfm?edit_id=25
During their triumphant 1939 tour of Canada, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth took a brief detour south of the border to visit the Roosevelts at Hyde Park. It was the first time a reigning monarch had set foot on American soil, and to mark the occasion president and Mrs. Roosevelt introduced the royal couple to a local delicacy called "hot dogs."
THREE LITTLE WORDS
At dinner in Paris a couple of years ago, I was asked about “this American sickness with gunsâ€.
“Americans have guns,†I said, “because a lot of Americans like having guns.â€
My host scoffed. “A lot of people here would like to have guns, too. But they don’t.â€
“Exactly,†I said.
The difference between America and most of the rest of the world can be summed up in three words: “We, the people.†The Warsaw Pact had “People’s Republicsâ€, of course, but, when you call yourself a “People’s Republicâ€, you aren’t. Lots of political systems invoke “the peopleâ€, but very few trust them enough to live by it. For four decades in the Middle East, the likes of the House of Saud and President Mubarak explicitly sold themselves to Washington as anti-democratic brakes on the uglier inclinations of their subjects. Their argument was: okay, we’re undemocratic, but believe me with a crowd like ours you wouldn’t want democracy. If it was ever a persuasive argument, it isn’t now.
But that line isn’t confined to Araby. It’s standard in the new Europe, too – and not just at my elegant French dinner party. On June 13th, the Europe Union held elections, and, though between the Baltic and the Irish Sea there were significant regional variations, the key trends were this: low turn-out in some places, high turn-out for “Euroskeptic†parties in others, and big anti-government votes partout. The division in Europe is between the twin forces of Apathy and Hostility. Nonetheless, five days later, the leaders of 25 nations huddled in a Gauloise-filled room and emerged with a “European Constitution†– a blueprint for a Federal European state for which the election results of less than a week earlier had made plain they had no popular mandate.
To which my hosts in Paris would have shrugged: “So what?â€
The principle underpinning the new Europe is exactly the same as that advanced by King Fahd and his thousands of princes – not “We, the peopleâ€, but “We know better than the peopleâ€. We know better than them on guns and the death penalty and the Euro and constitutional arrangements, and pretty much everything else, including election results. When 29% of Austrian voters were impertinent enough to plump for Joerg Haider’s Freedom Party, thereby earning the unlovely nationalists a place in the governing coalition, the EU punished them by imposing sanctions on the country. As the Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson put it, “The program that is developing in Austria is not in line with EU values.†In the new Europe, the will of the people is subordinate to the will of the Perssons.
One sympathizes with the Continental elites. Last time, they let the will of the people loose, it gave them Nazism and Fascism, and militarism and genocide, all of which were hugely popular. So after the war the priority of Europe’s governing class was to constrain the masses. In the current Wilson Quarterly (as in Woodrow), Professor Jed Rubenfeld of Yale makes the case that it was America which essentially invented the means to contain European nationalism – by concocting “a new system of international law and multilateral governanceâ€. As Rubenfeld argues, “The internationalism and multilateralism we promoted were for the rest of the world, not for us.â€
There’s a measure of truth in this. The paternalistic arrangements Washington promoted for post-war Europe would have been unacceptable at home in a republic founded on popular sovereignty. But therein lies the irony. Ever since Karl Marx sat in the Reading Room of the British Library in London writing Das Kapital, all the most destructive anti-western ideologies have been invented in the west. In the dining rooms of agreeable Ivy League colleges, they fret about imposing western values on the developing world but not a whit about imposing anti-western values, all of which were developed in the west – from Communism and Fascism to subtler grievances like “neo-colonialismâ€. Even Islamofascism is at core a traditional European-style political totalitarianism that’s cannily exploited a structural weakness in Islam and taken it for a ride. I’m not saying Islam itself isn’t hugely problematic. I tend to agree with Churchill on the curses of Mohammedanism – “fatalistic apathy… improvident habits… degraded sensualism…â€, etc – but it took a Fascist politicization to make it a global threat.
What’s happening in Europe today is a refinement of western anti-westernism. A system of remote, unaccountable, post-nationalist, pan-continental institutions urged upon the Continent by America has become the principal vehicle for anti-Americanism. “A politically united Europe will be a stronger partner to advance our goals,†insists Strobe Talbott. Tell it to Mr Persson, the aforementioned Swede, who says the purpose of the European Union is that “it’s one of the few institutions we can develop as a balance to US world dominationâ€. Sweden was famously relaxed about Nazi world domination and Soviet world domination, but even in the chancelleries of Stockholm there comes a time when the threat is so unspeakable you have to get off the fence.
The EU is not a “balance to US world dominationâ€. Indeed, it will have difficulty dominating its own backyard. The multilateral panaceas and US security blanket imposed on Europe have led it to its present paradoxical state of militantly pacifistic anti-American moral equivalism. There are lessons here - alas, too late for Europe to learn, but not for America.
National Review, July 12th 2004
http://www.steynonline.com/index2.cfm?edit_id=25
