Some thoughts:
Liberals are determined to mock and ridicule the notion that Obama’s moving America in a European direction. But of course he is. Liberals have been — unapologetically — pushing America in that direction for generations.
Anyway, what I didn’t get into in the column is how this contrasts with the theocracy-panic of five minutes ago. Back then, the liberal consensus was that we need to be very, very, very scared that the bible thumpers were going to take over everything and turn us into a Handmaid’s Tale (itself a classic example of paranoid fiction). But back then, if I had suggested that America’s rich history of religious tolerance and pluralism could stand up to the Orwellian onslaught of Bush’s Office of Faith Based Initiatives, I would have been laughed off as ludicrously naive.
But when Obama is literally spending trillions of dollars to move us in a European direction, conservatives like Mark Steyn, Charles Murray, and others are supposedly daft for thinking this is anything worth worrying about.
It’s just the substitution of one religion for another — worship of the state.
Whether trillions of dollars are being wasted and whether America will be more European as a result are two distinct, although not unrelated, questions. America has a libertarian streak, but it also has a populist streak, a Puritan-utopian streak, and a streak of plain old unprincipled smash-and-grab get-rich-quickism. It’s entirely possible that trllions will be wasted without constructing a welfare state that provides medical care, guaranteed jobs, etc. — it may just all end up in certain peoples’ pockets.
An essential part of Europe is the existence of an aristocracy. At one time, it was hereditary. More recently, it probably includes the politically connected Eurocrats.
Putting public monies into certain people’s pockets, or making public office a gateway to getting control over lots of money, creates an aristocracy in the USA.
Unfortunately, the European aristocratic tradition included some notion of responsibility. No such tradition on this side of the pond (Al Gore, Nancy Pelosi, I am talking to YOU).