Cut the Naïve Europhilia

Published at 10:19 on 5 October 2018

American liberals and European social democrats look just so stupid when they post things like this.

It does such a good job of pushing all their buttons and pandering to their preconceived biases of how the world is that they don’t stop to kick the tires on the premise and ask how well it explains how the world actually is. Answer: not so well.

Just consider how well fascist politics is selling in their beloved Europe at the moment. Fascist parties are actually in power right now in both Hungary and Poland. OK, but that’s Eastern Europe, you say. Well, in Western Europe, a basically fascist party routinely gets about 50% of the vote in Austria, the AfD is growing by leaps and bounds in Germany, the now-rebranded Front National is a a perennial force to be reckoned with in France (and has been for decades), and Berlusconi ruled in coalition with fascists for years in Italy. That’s just to pick a few examples that come to my mind off the bat; give me a little more time and I could probably rattle off at least as many more examples.

Or consider how much better the USA respects the liberty of children than most of Europe, where children are compelled by law to be confined inside authoritarian classrooms for longer hours with less vacation time. While being so compelled, they are often subject to batteries of standardized tests that are used to constrain their futures and career options for the rest of their lives. That, while they’re not even in their late teens yet!

I’ve even heard liberals more than once bemoan this state of affairs, and wish wistfully that the USA could be as authoritarian and domineering towards children as Europe is. All in the name of “helping” them get a “better” education, of course. Maybe they should look at the Nobel Prize list and see which country is by far the leader when it comes to the number of its citizens which have received them. I suggest that this is no coincidence, and the greater amount of free time American children experience is tied directly to a greater propensity to develop unconventional and original ideas later in life, some of which prove to be quantum advancements in knowledge.

Yes, there’s no shortage of awfulness and hypocrisy about the USA. That doesn’t mean the correct response is to idealize Western Europe. No hierarchical society, anywhere, is worthy of such idolatry. All have closets full of skeletons, just like all have areas where they are doing things better than the norm.

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