Europe is dying, right along with socialism and Obama-ism. The election results yesterday prove that Europe’s voters don’t know they’re committing suicide — or don’t care. The only pertinent question is what will take Europe’s place once its political union, and its worthless currency, both wind up on the ash heap of history.
Three times in the last century America had to step in to save Europe from itself — in World War One, World War Two, and the Cold War. Now we’ll have to do it again, as Europeans stumble dazed and broke from the rubble created by their EU bureaucrats, politicians, and unions. But this time it won’t be American soldiers, or arms, or even a nuclear umbrella that comes to Europe’s rescue. It’ll be American ideas and policies based on free markets, economic growth, and individual freedom.
In one sense, Europeans have no place left to go. They tried fascism and Communism; those proved deadly flops. That left state socialism’s “mixed economy.” The European Union was created in 1992 at the end of the Cold War — a victory, we note, of America’s making, not Europe’s — as a monument to socialism’s ideal of large centralized planned economies and societies. It’s the same ideal Obama and his liberal friends have worshiped for a generation — with only slightly less disastrous results here.
But in spite of Obama’s mountain of debt, reckless government spending, and punitive regulation, America is coming back. We’re the last major capitalist, pro-growth economy on earth, with an energy sector built on shale oil and gas, a reviving advanced manufacturing base, and a wireless and high-tech innovation industry second to none. All it will take is a pro-business president to turn the 21st century into the next American century — and to show how free markets and the private sector can turn around even the most shattered economies.
Post-Katrina New Orleans is becoming a burgeoning high-tech Bayou Valley; gas fracking rigs spring up from the desolate Rust Belt landscape of central Pennsylvania. This will be the new model for a post-EU Europe.
Who knows. Maybe at the end of all this, Europeans will discover their own culture buried under two centuries of socialist and Marxist garbage: the Europe of Adam Smith and Tocqueville, of von Mises and Hayek, of Aristotle and Aquinas. Maybe they’ll realize their birthright as the original home of liberty and freedom, at long last.
— Arthur Herman’s new book, Freedom’s Forge: How American Business Produced Victory in World War Two, comes out from Random House on May 8.
A year ago I would have agree with the Mr. Herman completely. Unfortunately, after the disasterous Republican primary, I no longer believe that the American people, on the whole, have the will necessary to change our course away from that same abyss.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseLike the Europeans, too many of our people are enamored of the idea of idylling their days away, spending other people's money. Too many of our people have learned that it is much easier to vote for a living than to work for a living. Just look at the wailing, even from many so called conservatives, if you even mention cutting back on SS.
Just look at the skyrocketing claims for disability under the SS program. Most of those people will never find their way back to the work force. And after two years on disability, they automatically qualify for Medicare, no matter their age. Many will just find an under-the-table part-time job to keep food on the table or the landlord at bay. We are going the way of the French, who appear to want more free money and longer naps.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI fear you are right; we are doomed to decline along with the rest of the West. Romney is positioned to be our Sarko. Like the Gallic lame duck he will probably win his first election. But as Admiral Yamamoto observed after telling his superiors that a raid on Pearl Harbor could give their forces a free hand in the Pacific for about six months -- "and then what."
Romney won't try to make any serious changes. He may talk a good reform game. So did Sarko in his day. Talk is where it will end. As our decline continues, people will turn away from Romney and opt for the only alternative our two party system will offer them -- a left-wing Democrat. Look for Republicans to win control of both houses of Congress this year together with the White House only to lose it all over the next two election cycles.
We had what was probably our last chance to pull out of our tailspin this year and we blew it. The GOP chose to make itself irrelevant by nominating the ideolgoically clueless Romney. We probably won't get another chance.
Welcome to Argentina del Norte.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"The only pertinent question is what will take Europe’s place once its political union, and its worthless currency"
Replace Europe with the United States.
The U.S. is technically a union in which the individual states that make up that union are politically irrelevant. The states should just be called administrative districts of the federal government.
and, of course, our currency is equally as worthless.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThis has to be as ill-informed and uneducated a comment as I've ever read on these pages, excepting those deliberatly so posted by our resident trolls. The states may have no political relevence internationally, but they are hardly administrative districts of the federal government, and will definitely lose any passing resemblence to such when the money from DC dries up, as it must since we simply haven't got any and can't really just keep printing it.
I could go into the concept of the federal system, and the important role played by the states, especially as the conservators of the "general welfare", but I fear I would be wasting your time because you won't understand it, and my time because you won't care.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThanks for taking the time to tell us you don't have the time.
I feel deprived.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse>> Thanks for taking the time to tell us you don't have the time. I feel deprived.
Interestingly snarky considering Palin probably agrees with everything he said.
He just said he didn't want to spend time justifying the bloody obviousness of his comments to a bloviating fool who wouldn't listen anyway.
...So you jumped on him instead of the bloviating fool.
Thanks for taking the time to make a pointless attack. *You* should have deprived *us*.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseUnfortunately, what we have seen in the middle east is what is poised to happen in Europe.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI can see Europe having its own 'Arab Spring' where the multitudes of Muslim immigrants in Europe take over.. either piece by piece via violence or in actual elections where the Islamists are able to control a fractured electorate.
The issue with this proposal lies in the entrenched differences among European states. They would sooner go to war with each other than unite and follow the model. It's a reasonable proposal, and the EU is roughly similar to the United States under the Articles of Confederation. We see the large issue with state debt and the inability of certain states to pay their debt off in Europe just as it existed in early America. Americans were able to unite under the Constitution and forgo certain royalties of their separate existences, and Europeans will never do this out of national pride that is centuries upon centuries old.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIt may be time, per Mr. Herman, for the Scots to [re-]"invent the modern world."
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"They tried fascism and Communism"?
Interesting choice of capitalization. Why is the latter capitalized, and not the former?
It would seem to be a leftist formulation, not to discredit fascism, but to discredit the modern-day conservatives whom they analogize to fascists.
Someone needs to tell people that fascism merely has the state commandeer the private sector, while communism has the state acquire all the private sector's property, and then commandeer it. There is not a lot of difference.
And modern leftists bear a striking resemblance to fascists. Not Nazis; fascists.
I'm not sure who Arthur Herman perceives he's respecting with that capital "C".
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbusePoint well taken. Neither word is a proper noun.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseGood point. I think the distinction is made through the author's association of Communism in its Russian form, not necessarily Marx's version or any other version. The reference to one particular failing form is where it becomes unique and capitalized. He considers fascism, on the other hand, a failure no matter where it is applied and thus relegates it to being general.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI am not optimistic enough to believe that the US can "save" Europe from their financial crisis. Financially, the US is more like the French hiding behind their Maginot in the late 1930's rather than the US waiting to be awakened in the late 1930's.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYou folks are way, way too negative on the potential for a Romney presidency with regard to economic policy. Romney is a successful entrepreneur (not a big business bureaucrat)who has seen first-hand the negative impact of oppressive regulation and punitive taxes. He is committed to meaningful reform.His economic reforms will be Reaganesque both in scope and impact. As noted by Mr. Herman, American business has become much more competitive globally. We are adding manufacturing jobs in the U.S., we have cheap sources of energy that we will be able to develop, and we have advantages in technology and brand-name consumer franchises. Corporate balance sheets are generally at record strength; all that is needed to unleash that productive capital is a change in Washington. Recovery really does begin on election night with the prospects of a pro-business, pro-free markets Republican president and Republican Congress. Have faith folks; real change is on the way.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI take it you have never actually listened to Romney or read his campaign material.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseApparently he hasn't bothered to learn anything about Romney's career at Bain either.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYou are overestimating Romney's importance if he were elected. This battle for the nation's soul will be fought in Congress and in the courts. Congress is the key. If we can get congressmen who are fiscally responsible and respect the constitution elected, we will win.
The President seems important now, but that is only because Congress has abdicated many of its duties to unelected bureaucrats controlled by the President. If Congress were to step up and just defund a few departments and reign in others, the power of the President would shrink. Furthermore, a less powerful Romney administration would still be in a position to give us the one thing we would truly need from them: conservative appointments to the Supreme Court.
Congress is the prize. Romney vs. Obama is a distraction, but one we will probably win anyways. If the American people can force Congress to meet its responsibilities and follow the Constitution, we will have won, RINO in the White House or not.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYou are assuming we will have enough non-squish Republicans to get any changes past the Democrat fillibusters. Without a president who is willing to fight tooth and nail, and put his entire presidency on the line to get those things through congress, none of them will get through congress.
Romney has proven time and time again, he won't fight for conservative ideas.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIf the GOP reps had any stones at all, they would simply refuse to pass a budget that did not immediately change course in the size and scope of government. There should be certain non-negotiable items: Changing medicare and SS eligibility and payments immediately, ending baseline budgeting and automatic COLA adjustments, and closing the doors on at least 2 Depts. immediately (Education, Agriculture, & EPA are particularly counterproductive). Nothing short of an immediately $500 billion cut will suffice.
The GOP would probably lose the presidential election and both houses of congress with this behavior, but we would certainly be better positioned after the inevitable default and collapse of the U.S. Frankly, I believe we are already finished and would rather not be in power in the next few years when we slip into a depression.
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