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- Beware Europe’s Season of Woe
- - By
    
    Llewellyn King
  - Published
    
    October 17, 2011 – 1:40 pm
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- There is a political and cultural freeze over the Atlantic. U.S. antipathy
  to the European Union has been gathering slowly over decades.
  Initially, left and right supported the integration of Europe, from its
  earliest beginnings in the 1950s, as a six-nation coal and steel
  community, through Britain's disputed entry in 1973 to its emergence as a
  semi-political union, after the signing of the Maastricht Treaty in 1992.
  
  For the Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Carter administrations,
  business in Europe was with individual countries, held together not by
  their efforts to unite their trade but by the looming Soviet monster. When
  that fell with the Berlin Wall, the United States and Europe began a
  reappraisal that is a work in progress.
  
  Americans began to reassess the emergence of a big third bloc in the
  world: Europe. Fears of a trade citadel, unofficially called "Fortress
  Europe," were voiced in Washington. These escalated with the signing of
  the Single European Act, which went into effect in 1992: Was a new
  superpower emerging from the womb?
  
  Petty trade disputes proliferated — allegations of dumping, arguments on
  jet engine noise and the technical fix for old airliners, known as "hush
  kits," dominated trade issues. European cheese, wine and other products
  were targeted as Europeans and Americans came to realize that trade
  partners are not trade friends; that national interests do not always
  coincide with lofty trade goals. For example, Europeans hate restrictions
  on American landing rights for their airlines, and Americans hate European
  restrictions on our genetically engineered agricultural products.
  
  Even before the second Iraq war, there were growing tensions between the
  United States and a more cohesive Europe, which had its own central bank,
  court and trade policies.
  
  But the European Union lacks many of the features of a functioning
  superstate. It has no military and a mishmash of national and
  supranational laws. It is governed by commissioners but has a parliament,
  which meets in Strasbourg and Brussels and has little authority to enact
  law. The politically ambitious must still find their way in their state
  legislatures: in Britain to Parliament, in France to the National Assembly
  and in Germany to the Bundestag.
  
  Yet the superstate has powers. Step forward small (5 million people)
  Slovakia which has just brought the rescue of Greece, through an EU-wide
  financial bailout, to a halt. The tail wagged the European dog.
  The European project is full of strange anomalies. Like every other
  member, Slovakia — which ought not to count in an organization of 500
  million people — has veto power. It can act like a single U.S. senator
  holding up a nomination.
  
  Because the European Union is the product of many treaties (often
  unpopular at passage), sweeteners like the veto were handed out like candy
  at Halloween.
  
  Yet the European Union is a reality. In good times, most of its members
  are only aware of its largest program: the Common Agricultural Policy. It
  is a gargantuan agricultural support program. In many ways, it is the
  backbone of the European Union. The European Union pays some farmers to
  grow and others not to grow, seeking to find a kind of parity between the
  poor hillside farm and the great fertile valleys.
  
  The boldest and most risky Euro-scheme by far, though, is the euro. Only
  11 countries got into the euro zone, but all will be taxed to prop it up.
  
  Enter conservative U.S. economists, laughing. All along, they said it
  would not work because there was no mechanism to cool, say, an overheated
  German economy while propping up the southern states of Europe, referred
  to by Winston Churchill as "the soft underbelly."
  
  Now that Greece is teetering on default, Euro-critics in the United States
  are feeling jubilant. They are confident that Europe has been undermined
  by social services, universal nanny statism and other degeneracies, like
  low church attendance, generally available abortion, teenage drinking and
  the lack of the death penalty.
  
  While Europeans are in despair about their profligacy, the idea of
  sacrifice is met with street violence. The Europhobes might be even more
  joyous if it were not for that awful sinking realization that the ice
  cracking under Europe may be the same ice cracking under the United
  States.
  
  Call it the soft underbelly of globalization. – For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate
- one response
- Hey Dick, Add a Spoonful of Socialism to Your Tea
- - By
    
    Llewellyn King
  - Published
    
    December 17, 2009 – 10:54 pm
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- MAASTRICHT, Netherlands — The English like to say, from an old music hall song, “a little of what you fancy does you good.” Well, so does a smidgeon of socialism.
  
  Shock horror! Alert Dick Armey, inform Rudy Giuliani and let Rupert Murdoch know. Heresy is dangerous, and the correct authorities should be informed.
  
  Like most people who rail against European socialism, those three have been the beneficiaries of some largesse that might be described as socialistic.
  
  Armey, who is leading the tea bag revolution and who talks of the socialist threat as though a fleet were coming up the Potomac to sack Washington, is the beneficiary of the rights, honors and money that come from being a former congressman, all the way down to a handsome health care package.
  
  Then there is Giuliani, who presided over the second most liberal city in the United States, after San Francisco, added to its amenities and improved America’s largest subway system. Notably, he did not end rent control, now known as “rent stabilization,” nor did he end a plethora of liberal services available in New York. Yet if the former mayor, who wanted to be president, wants to denigrate something, he utters the “s” word.
  
  Murdoch is special. He has played footsie with the Gordon Brown Labor government in London; played up to the Communist Chinese; cooed over the Clintons and booed ideas of assistance to the media; and employed a staff at Fox Cable News who are devoted to castigating Europe and its left-of-center democracies. Worse, Murdoch has benefitted over the years from various government subsidies including the Commonwealth Press Cable Rate, which moved news inexpensively around the world before the Internet. And he has never cried out against second-class postage, another huge government subsidy to publishers.
  
  OK, socialism, even the mild kind favored here in the Netherlands, isn’t the promised land of governance; but it produces, at the street level, some pretty agreeable result. Scads of American visitors groove on the country’s parks, public toilets, bike paths and buses that are easy to use.
  
  This small city of about 200,000 bears its medieval history with pride and its socialist amenities with grace, from miles of bike paths to trains that can whisk you to the next hamlet or to Hamburg, Germany.
  
  Travel to a nearby major city, like Amsterdam, Brussels or Paris, and Europe is yours with its high-speed trains that crisscross the continent at 200 mph, and even plunge under the English Channel to London’s St. Pancras Station, a masterpiece which has been restored to its Victorian glory.
  
  London itself adds public amusements with pride. Three recent ones are the Ferris wheel, known as the London Eye; the foot bridge across the Thames, nicknamed the “wobbly bridge”; and the New Tate, an art gallery in an old power station.
  
  You can put this down to the kind of post-socialism that former British prime minister Tony Blair (a Murdoch man) described as “social-ism;” not the old-school, “Keep the Red Flag Flying” socialism, but the idea that people are entitled to services beyond national defense. A good question for Giuliani might be: “Would you have approved the building of Central Park?”
  
  Where socialism–lite has failed in Europe is in an excess of regulation, particularly the rigidity it has brought to hiring and firing. This has kept small business in Europe operating at the mom-and-pop level, scared to hire because in most European countries firing is subject to a labor tribunal’s approval. Approval seldom comes.
  
  One of the great drivers of entrepreneurism in the United States is the harsh but effective idea that employees serve “at will.” That, the socialists can’t stomach. They want Paradise enow.
  
  A little socialism will do–and we needn’t mention single-payer health care.
- 2 responses
- Happy Birthday, America; Take That, Europe!
- - By
    
    Llewellyn King
  - Published
    
    July 1, 2009 – 8:44 pm
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    Zimbabwe
- Happy birthday, America—really happy birthday.
  
  As an immigrant, I can say that with an authenticity and sincerity I would not have if I had been born on this blessed piece of real estate with its spirit of possibility. I came here because I am of the last generation that was, perhaps globally, pro-American.
  
  Yes, after World War II, the United States was admired the world over. I grew up in Africa where American education, American technology and American goods–from cars to radios–were venerated.
  
  When Coca-Cola was introduced into Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), there was practically a national holiday. The company’s employees–with the blessing of the authorities and government departments—flooded the schools with vending machines. This was not because local soft drinks were not refreshing. No, it was a kind of homage to the United States: We wanted a sip of the American magic. As a colony, we wanted less of London and more of New York. We believed Americans were invincible. In our eyes Americans were superior because they had smarter government, better laws and more entrepreneurial people.
  
  Of course, in that faraway place, we idealized all things American and sometimes we were wishfully wrong. For example, we believed that the United States had solved its race problems (hardly in the 1950s) and that the more we followed America and broke with our mother country, Britain, the better. It was the American example that led Prime Minister Ian Smith to unilaterally–and disastrously, as it turned out–declare independence from Britain on Nov. 11, 1965.
  
  In 1959, I moved to Britain where there was a much greater sense of competition across the Atlantic, more resentment of America climbing as Britain was sinking. Also, there was resentment of America’s abandonment of the Anglo-French invasion of the Suez Canal in 1956. It was a period of adjustment.
  
  It was also a wrenching time in European intellectual life. The Hungarian uprising of 1956 and the Prague Spring of 1968, both followed by brutal Soviet repression, undermined European intellectuals’ faith in communism; but they did not switch to untrammeled support of capitalism. Wary of the politics of the right, they were looking for kindness, gentleness and an indigenous way forward.
  
  Europeans wanted a future that would allow for their historical experiences, but would not sweep them into the sphere of influence of the Soviet Union or the United States. That way forward was democratic socialism, embraced by all European political parties except the extreme nationalistic ones of the right and the communists, who are still found on the extreme left in France, Italy and other countries.
  
  As Europe moved into its democratic socialist future, anti-Americanism grew. It was based on economic resentment, fear of U.S. foreign policy and anger over the difficulty of penetrating the U.S. market. Appreciation of American sacrifice in World War II was laced with resentment that America did not join the war until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
  
  Some blame for anti-Americanism lies with the European newspapers of the time. They seized on crime; the oddities of American life (like the shoe-shaped house); the size of American automobiles; and, of course, the cavorting of Hollywood stars. While American media portrayed Europe as Disneyland for grownups, Europeans were led to believe that American life was brutal and freakish.
  
  Serious chroniclers like Alastair Cooke–an Englishman who dedicated a good part of his life telling Britain, on the BBC and in The Manchester Guardian, that America was a wondrous place–failed to arrest the rising tide of anti-Americanism.
  
  That had to come later, after the Vietnam and Iraq wars, and with the election of Barack Obama to the presidency. None of our carping European friends could pull off such an historical first in their own countries.
  
  No matter what you think of the man, Obama’s election as the first African-American president is a very American triumph. The world has applauded the system that could produce this result and the people who made it possible. Only in America. Happy birthday. –For North Star Writers Group
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White House Chronicle

News Analysis with a Sense of Humor

Beware Europe’s Season of Woe

Hey Dick, Add a Spoonful of Socialism to Your Tea

Happy Birthday, America; Take That, Europe!

The lost art of debate — and other wordy topics

Obama’s strengths and weaknesses; the Internet

A discussion of Shirley’s book, “December 1941: 31 Days That Saved America and Changed the World”

World events as the U.S. elections get fully underway

The Joys of Transportation