Hanson begins by describing the current situation of Trump bullying European leaders and describing the European union as equal and more powerful than the U.S. in theory by population, by combined GNP, by combined landmass and by multiple accesses to oceans and geographical areas, by being the center of the world's largest religion, by some of the greatest nations originating as European colonies, by the number of people worldwide who speak European languages. By European products being household names, Hanson names them, by being the world's greatest tourist attractions, by being the originators of Roman republicanism and its later globalized empire, the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution.
Hanson describes all that Europe has to be proud about, basically, the awesome history of Europe and all its luminaries, its discoveries and all its contributions to mankind. Hanson's list of things that make European astounding is impressive. He rattles off European achievements.
Then Hanson asks why are European leaders feeling increasingly irrelevant? What happened? Where did Europe go wrong? Why so passive-aggressive in their exasperation when a guy like Trump challenges them?
In most high-stakes diplomacy—denuclearizing North Korea, attempting to make China play by international norms of trade and commerce, keeping Vladimir Putin within his borders, destroying ISIS, isolating a theocratic and potentially nuclear Iran, and the perennial Israel and Palestinian problem—Europe is largely a spectator. Its once heralded “soft power” of the 1990s and early 21st century is more soft than powerful. The friends of Europe no longer count on it; its enemies do not fear it.The high-tech revolution that includes Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft, passed Europe by. And judged by the things that great powers are weighed, Europe is waning; fuel, energy, education, demography, political stability, and military power. Hanson cites numbers.
Here Hanson gets to it.
Laws against fracking, German dismantling of nuclear power plants, massive green subsidies for erratic energy, all self-inflicted wounds, have made gasoline and energy costs among the highest globally and making Europe dependent on Russia, Central Asia and OPEC for its energy.
Politically, Europe is no better. They've failed to assimilate diverse people, languages and cultures with long historic grievances into a pan-European nation. At least not without coercion that is not democratic. For all its claims on acceptance of diversity, it's actually intolerant of dissident voices resulting in frustration and polarization. Europe is slowly trisecting. Eastern Europeans revolt at Berlin's open-borders bullying. Mediterranean Europeans resent bearing the frontline burden of immigration. While Britain drifts away.
European government is run by an elite group of professional and bureaucratic careerists exempt from the concrete consequences of their ideology and policies. People other than themselves bear the brunt of massive illegal immigration on their schools, neighborhoods and public safety.
Hanson gets to the point.
The implementation of a social welfare state seeks to provide cradle-to-grave support for a static underclass in exchange for its political support for an entrenched elite. The expensive social project squeezes the middle class, as taxes rise to pay for entitlements for the poor and to subsidize the lifestyles of the mandarins of the administrative state.
The European social welfare state envisions military expenditures as theft from social welfare entitlements—a viable assumption as long as the United States continues to underwrite European national security.Hanson describes European socialism as a politics of envy.
European culture is uncomfortable with individual drive toward upward mobility and entrepreneurship. Europe's attitude is exemplified by Obama's infamous declamations, "you didn't build that," "now is not the time to profit," and "I do think at a certain point you've made enough money." Europeans see profit as violation of fairness. Liberty is not the operative agenda, equality is, and that applies to anyone who manages to crawl across the border.
Here is Hanson's best part.
Out of this complex matrix emerges the haughty European mindset that it alone has transcended the limitations of human nature, convinced that enlightened ideas about soft power and pure reason can eliminate war, poverty, and inequality not just inside Europe, but globally as well.Here is the most useful part for argument.
Loud proclamations on human rights along with antipathy to religion as a sort of dark and unenlightened force from Europe's troubled past have deluded the European Union about the ultimate sources of its safety and prosperity. Its postwar arc to affluence and security in part rested on US military subsidies along with running up large trade deficits with the US that supported the evolution of global economy. European policy in reality hinges on trading with anyone, while in the abstract it opposes human rights abuses. Europeans speak loftily but behave with self-interest.
China assessed Europe and concluded it cannot or it will not do much about China's mercantilism based on violations of all the canons of postwar trade agreements. Two-million Muslim migrants assume correctly that Europe is divided and incapable of using political and moral will to protect its own sovereignty, far less defend its political and religious history and its traditions. Russia accepts that an unarmed and energy-deprived Europe will not do anything to check Russian expansionism. To Russia, Europe is more worried about oil and natural gas supplies than it is in translating its outrage over Putin's authoritarianism into any real pushback. Better for Europe to buy as much Russian gas as possible while damning Trump for colluding with Russia and for being too soft on the Russian oligarchy.
Hanson cites polls. (skip)
American solutions to European crises in confidence are unthinkable: deregulation, tax cutting, more referenda, increased defense spending, fracking, border security. Those solutions are antithetical to European elite's self-preceptions and humanitarian pretensions and would force a collective admission of failure.
Hanson saves his best shot for conclusion.
Europe is left with its signature mythology that pan-Europeanism itself kept the peace for 75 years, that ignores US-led NATO and the anomaly that Germany did not develop nuclear weapons while the traditional frontline enemies in two world wars did, on the instinct that power not pretension keeps the peace.
Finally, Europe isn't mad at Trump and the people who elected Trump for being crude, rather, they're angry because they know that Trump and the US are needed now more than ever by a continent that has lost its way.
So then, Europe gets no respect because Europe lost its way.
7 comments:
So Rodney Dangerfield was doing better than he thought
Nice point about high tech, which I never considered. Euro software is legendary for its "you're on your own" attitude.
The implementation of a social welfare state seeks to provide cradle-to-grave support for a static underclass in exchange for its political support for an entrenched elite. The expensive social project squeezes the middle class, as taxes rise to pay for entitlements for the poor and to subsidize the lifestyles of the mandarins of the administrative state.
The European social welfare state envisions military expenditures as theft from social welfare entitlements—a viable assumption as long as the United States continues to underwrite European national security.
Those 2 paras are killers. The Lefties used the same idea as one of its arguments against the Vietnam War and it's been one of the basic tenets of such systems since the days of bread and circuses. Watch the piece in "Gladiator" as the set-up for the big battle in the Colosseum where the senators discuss how Commodus intends to use the games to ingratiate himself with the people.
PS and OT Looks like Vlad spilled the beans on a lot of Deep State stuff to The Donald.
Among the fun stuff, US Intel helped move $400,000,000 to Hillary's campaign and his offer for Mueller to send reps to Russia to observe questioning of indicted military officers.
The ball is now in Mule Ears' court.
The German/Russian energy collusion is a tough problem for long term security, but it means that Germany will be shipping even more finished goods east to balance trade. China will not like this.
He missed the biggest problem with Europe: it's full of Europeans descended from those who self-selected by lack of initiative and vision, who didn't get on a boat for freedom and the future. Now the worst people of the world, who have failed to make anything of themselves for centuries are invading to take the spoils left guarded by sheep. Theirs is not a future to be envied, and definitely not to be copied here. Stupid socialists.
I had something akin to a mini epiphany while reading. The part about considering their religion an embarrassing dark spot of superstition from their past.
When you don't respect and honor your own traditions, the ones that build their cathedrals and their governments, their economies, the traditions that US still respects and follows, their Scottish philosophers, Adam Smith, for example, then why should I?
Why would I want to visit their castles and their cathedrals and the places of their famous authors, when they regard them embarrassments?
It's like my nanna, Roseannadanna Nanna, used to always say, "uckemfay ightray in the uttbay.
I have no impulse whatsoever to even visit.
The little bit about John Cleese showily proclaiming his abandonment of London because it wasn't English any more.
My point at the time was that Cleese had built a very profitable career mocking and disparaging all things British and English, so his leave taking was the height of hypocrisy.
It's said WWI was the ruin of Europe. Western Europe maybe, but not so much WWII, but the peace of the Marshall Plan was its true destruction.
Europe bought into the socialist democratic scam decades ago. They have only themselves to blame for the shell game that is their ideology and politics. It will lead them to ruin and already has with their ingrained PC/Multicultural/Diversity paradigms that leaves them open and vulnerable while believing it is their strength to not defend themselves over a complete takeover of their separate identities as nations and as distinct peoples. They are doomed.
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