Tuesday.....International.....A Warning From A Brit

My June 29, 2010 blog was titled The Comeback Kid and it was about the Austrian economist and Nobel Prize winner in Economics Friedrich August Hayak. I referred to a Wall Street Journal piece on Hayak and its comments that his book The Road To Serfdom was getting a new hearing. I believe that recent sales of the book, written in 1944, were last reported as 175,000. Hayak was an inspiration to both Reagan and Thatcher and a young, astute British Politician Daniel Hannan used it as the foundation for his book The New Road To Serfdom, A Letter Of Warning To America.  Hannan begins with his astonishment that Americans do not seem to see to see their country as anything special anymore, in fact they are trying to Europeanize. Well, there's nothing new with these comments but he continues and does indeed give even the most ardent critic of the radicals in power, fodder for the cannons. He says America is becoming less American even un...American as he describes us as less independent...less prosperous and less free and following the course his country had taken over the last century. He details how nations in his geographical sphere are defined by territory, language, religion and ethnicity but America has been defined by a set of ideals. He points out that administrations can change but not our enemies conception of us through those ideals and hate us of because of them. We are now losing our freedom therefore losing our essence. In a similar vein to Alexis de Tocqueville he sees our freedom to worship as the basis for our demands for other freedoms, for if we can discern for ourselves what God demands of us, we can therefore demand what a mere government can demand of us. He writes allegiance to the United States means allegiance to its foundational texts and the principles inherent therein. This is the main contention between progressives and conservatives, and as we have consistently argued, we are being fundamentally changed into an entirely new nation and those doing this, and the media who supports them, will not admit to it not permit the citizenry to be warned. None of us could have put it better than Hannon did in this Changing America into a different country will mean forsaking the most successful constitutional model in the world. It will mean abandoning the vision of your founders-a vision that has served to make your country rich and strong. It will mean betraying your ancestors and disinheriting your posterity. But alas, we seem more concerned on the strength of our local football teams' defense than our national defense. Hannon is currently part of the European Parliament and he instructs us, from first hand experience, in the differences between our Constitution and the one that we seem to want to exchange it for. He begins by describing European politicians as answering upward to those who secure their positions rather than downward as we do here where politicians answer to the people. The U. S. Constitution is 7,200 words long...the EU Constitution is 76,000 words. Ours is concerned with broad principles and theirs busies itself with such details as space exploration, the rights of disabled people and the status of asylum seekers. Our is about liberty, theirs is about power. Ours promises life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, theirs the right to strike action, free health care and affordable housing. We ratified ours and they took a couple of votes, lost those, and then implemented it. Their supreme power is vested in the hands of an appointed European Commission, the equivalent to the White House and has a monopoly of the right to initiate legislation.  We, according to Hannon, see our nationhood but he writes almost no one in Europe feels a comparable sense of pan-Continental affinity. There is no public opinion; there are no European media. The author laments the loss of its greatest strength, individual allegiances. He writes that up until now, Washington was an obstacle to more of a world government but now, under Obama, has a willingness to share sovereignty on issues ranging from climate change to collaboration with the International Criminal Court. This international change in outlook has accompanied a change in the domestic arrangements of the United States; a shift toward greater central control and higher federal spending. America, in short, is becoming more European. Hannon takes us on a tour of Europe with sections titled Don't Europeanize The Economy, Don't Europeanize Health Care, Don't Europeanize Welfare, Don't Europeanize Society, Don't European Immigration and summarizes it with Don't Abandon Federalism. He exposes their jurisprudence as we try to emulate it. Throughout the book he, in effect, says "you don't want to become us!" We learn a lot from Hannon on the history of the early relationship between our two countries, and we learn how Europeans think and why they often respond as they do. Hopefully Daniel Hannon is not finished with his own education for he misses a few things that one would have to be an American to know.  Religion defines us more than he observes. The tea party phenomenon did not appear ex nihilo but was, and is, conjoined with cultural conservatism. If European and world elites only had to deal with taxation rebels, it could be done. Add the full-orbed conservative and they will never accomplish their goals. He concludes his book with this So let me close with a heartfelt imprecation, from a Briton who loves his country to Americans who still believe in theirs. Honor the genius of your founders. Respect the most sublime constitution devised by human intelligence. Keep faith with the design that has made you independent. Preserve the freedom of the nation to which, by good fortune and God's grace, you are privileged to belong.