What's So Bad About Western Europe?
In the most recent Ricochet podcast, I was struck by how much of Monica Crowley's ire was directed at becoming like Western Europe. It was a solid five-minute block on how all the bad things that resulted from the election and the inauguration speech will lead us to the hell that is Western Europe.
Daily life in western Europe doesn't really seem so bad. Right now, I live in a small village in Germany with lots of nice houses, no crime, and seemingly random festivals which all involve great beer and food. Nothing but cafes are open on Sunday, so people spend the day with their families out hiking or sledding or having coffee. And it's utterly common to see beautifully maintained roadside or mountaintop shrines, and not a peep from whatever the German equivalent of the ACLU is.
It's substantially the same in most of the villages I've gone through, and in the big cities things really aren't that bad either. People actually leave their bikes unchained when they go into stores or restaurants. There might be some bad areas of Munich and Frankfurt and Berlin, but there's nothing like South Central LA or Chicago south of Hyde Park. There's a strong civic culture that, yes, gets channelled into annoying recycling, but is ultimately pretty nice. Everyone takes the initiative when it comes to keeping their sidewalk clean, and, despite the weather, most of the cars on the road are very well-maintained and shiny. And we get to drive "as fast as conditions permit" on most of das Autobahn.
OK, OK, I'll grant you unemployment in Spain, or unrest in Greece, and taxes sure are high. Gas is probably $2/gallon more than I'd be paying in Chicago (plus that dang exchange rate). The pop culture is pretty crappy (but then, most of that still comes from Hollywood). I heard a lot of horror stories about demographic demise and debts spiraling out of control before I moved over here, but Germany and France and most of the smaller countries around here are extremely pleasant to visit and to live in. Even former Eastern Bloc countries like Slovenia, Poland, and the Czech Republic are pretty darn nice. When I heard Mollie Hemingway later on the podcast I thought--yes, focus on your local institutions, which is exactly what Western Europe does well.
So maybe we need a better bogeyman. Personally, I'd be more upset if the US turned into Central America than Western Europe.
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Dec '12
Re: What's So Bad About Western Europe?
Genau!
German to English translation: exactly, precisely correct.
May '11
Re: What's So Bad About Western Europe?
Racist!
Which is why they use the false analogy of Europe.
Jul '11
Re: What's So Bad About Western Europe?
It's not that western Europe is bad now. It's that it exists in an unsustainable state. If western Europe had to pay for anything i.e. financing the creation of new drugs or their own national defense bankruptcy would soon follow. Nevermind the fact that the current state of western Europe may be coming to an end through a mixture of demographics and overwhelming welfare state costs. In the meantime its quite pleasant though.
Mar '11
Re: What's So Bad About Western Europe?
ctlaw
Racist!
Which is why they use the false analogy of Europe. · 44 minutes ago
Ah, yeah, that was not my intent. I was thinking more about the drug cartels and favelas...
May '12
Re: What's So Bad About Western Europe?
What you describe is the best possible outcome of the grand welfare state where everything is OK.
The goal of a socialist/welfare state is to have a high floor and a low ceiling. No one doing particularly poorly, no one outside of the state and few crony corporations doing particularly well.
Resources are generally concentrated with the state and a select few and the rest are allocated enough opportunity to get by and keep the riot potential to a minimum.
What the society lacks is challenge and creativity. The minimalist, everybody just getting by Ok tends to dull the senses, blunt the sense of adventure, and dull the populace to the excesses of the state.
Vice Potentate outlines where this leads. Once the populace disengages from determining their own outcome it inevitably fails.
We could become Western Europe also, for a short time.
Jul '10
Re: What's So Bad About Western Europe?
The Germans are a clean, orderly and admirable people from time to time. It's when they're not.
Apr '11
Re: What's So Bad About Western Europe?
Do you have freedom of speech in your little village? How about freedom of assembly? Can you exercise your right to bear arms?
If you're unsure, you can test it. Assemble like-minded people who support liberalizing gun laws in Germany. Display some nice posters of gun-toting Americans. Throw up a Gasden flag. Just do it. Without prior state approval.
Let us know how it goes.
May '10
Re: What's So Bad About Western Europe?
One could not summarize a book like Mark Steyn's America Alone in less than 200 words. But Germany, for example, requires 200,000 immigrants a year to keep their factories going. For 40 straight years German deaths have outstripped German births and the country's working age population will see a 30% reduction in the next few decades. Some small villages, whose life dates back hundreds of years will simply cease to exist.
Now the German economy is the only thing keeping the Euro afloat. How do you think that's going to continue?
The future, as Steyn points out, only belongs to those people who bother to show up.
Oct '10
Re: What's So Bad About Western Europe?
This brings to mind two other epigrams:
'Everything is fine until it isn't.'
'Germans make the best Americans but the worst Germans.'
The last one must've been coined during or shortly after WWII.
Aug '12
Re: What's So Bad About Western Europe?
Ist ja krass, was Sie hier geschrieben haben! And basically I agree with you on some points, but the fact that there are far worse places the U.S. could turn into does not mean that a full-scale embrace of the Euro-welfare state is desirable. I've experienced the tender mercies of the state-run healthcare system in Germany, and, while it did not sink to the level of horror stories I've heard about the NHS, I did get treatment that was by law the cheapest the doctor could prescribe, meaning a sinus infection that a doctor here would have cleared in days with antibiotics lingered for weeks. And then there was the hospital that tried to tell a LEGAL immigrant friend of mine from Nigeria that he did not have hepatitis in an attempt to send him home so that they would not have to treat him in Germany and at cost to the German system. "Mindestens hat jeder was," trans. "At least everybody has something" was the justification a German friend gave.
Oct '10
Re: What's So Bad About Western Europe?
"A country in the early stages of decline can be very pleasant." — Mark Steyn
Aug '12
Re: What's So Bad About Western Europe?
Jeff: Do you have freedom of speech in your little village? How about freedom of assembly? Can you exercise your right to bear arms?
If you're unsure, you can test it. Assemble like-minded people who support liberalizing gun laws in Germany. Display some nice posters of gun-toting Americans. Throw up a Gasden flag. Just do it. Without prior state approval.
Let us know how it goes. · 28 minutes ago
Or try homeschooling your children. This is a big one for Evangelical and Catholic friends of ours in Germany. Some of them are thinking of emigrating here because of it.
Jul '12
Re: What's So Bad About Western Europe?
I seem to remember at least a handful of Star Trek episodes that presented this problem, at least in metaphor. Some planet where life is pleasant, orderly, and safe ... but the people aren't actually free, or don't actually think for themselves. I'm not saying that's how it is in Europe; I'm just suggesting that a comfortable lifestyle is not necessarily the only objective we should strive for.
My fear is stagnation. Living in a statist "paradise" might, for the lucky ones, offer the best of what the early 21st century has to offer. But by discouraging entrepreneurs and investors, it might also guarantee that we'll never have anything better. Great technological advances, of the sort that dramatically transform (or extend) our lives, don't come from socialist countries.
Edited on January 29, 2013 at 5:29pmSep '10
Re: What's So Bad About Western Europe?
What you describe sounds fine if taking walks among the ruins is personally satisfying. Sounds like vacation to me.
Aug '12
Re: What's So Bad About Western Europe?
Then there's the "Energiewende"- the government-driven move away from nuclear power to wind and solar energy. This recipe for disaster is already causing supply planning headaches and driving up energy costs. If the Germans wise up and let the ideological hysteria subside, they may yet scrap it, but for now the energy policy situation looks like a slow-motion train wreck.
Sep '10
Re: What's So Bad About Western Europe?
Yes, talk to homeschoolers, gun owners or Turkish guest workers to get a slightly different perspective on the Germania of everyone's Utopian Dream.
Dec '12
Re: What's So Bad About Western Europe?
To further distill Mark Steyn's America Alone
"France can be France, and Germany Germany, because the United States of America is the United States of America."
Essentially, the argument is that France, Germany, and Western Europe can afford the pleasant welfare states they have because America guarantees their security and leads the world in innovation increasing productivity and and ever improving standard of living for the world. Without the United States and Americans being what we are, Western Europe would have been conquered by the Soviets or Muslims, or would have more quickly been overrun by their demographic issues as the prosperity enabled by the U.S.A. would have been diminished causing dramatic social upheaval as their welfare states collapsed.
However, once the U.S. becomes like Western Europe then everything collapses, the demographically vigorous Muslim societies will begin to dominate and will impose Islam, or death, on the unbelievers, and the young rebel against the elderly for stealing their wealth and opportunity.
Mar '11
Re: What's So Bad About Western Europe?
Yeah, I have read all Mark Steyn's books and I don't doubt there are problems somewhere on the horizon. But to say that Germany lacks innovation or freedom is I think a pretty big stretch.
But get back to the original point--what's so bad if the US becomes "more like" Western Europe? Bearing in mind that the US is different, and has a Bill of Rights and all the rest. That's what got me thinking about this, and thinking that this is a pretty fine place to live.
And the castles are nice, even if some are just ruins.
Sep '10
Re: What's So Bad About Western Europe?
Mar '11
Re: What's So Bad About Western Europe?
I'm not well traveled but I know England pretty well and the sense I get every time I visit is that the country is one enormous and amazing museum.
Everything there is so cool. Every town. Every little street. Everywhere you go. But it isn't alive. It's cool for what it was not for what it is or will be.
But anyway, I do agree that conservatives are frequently guilty of making these "oh, you know what I mean" comments. People never know what we mean. And then we get caught defending the position that sipping a coffee in Trafalgar Square before heading over to get a free peak at Van Gogh's Sunflowers is not totally awesome.
Which it totally is.