marginalized will have religion. That's why France's impoverished Muslim ghettos display more cultural confidence than the wealthiest enclaves of the capital. MORAL HEALTH
In this long twilight struggle brought into focus by September 11, the hard cultures will survive and the soft won't. In Europe, the soft culture is so pervasive--state pensions, protected jobs, six weeks of paid vacation, lavish unemployment benefits if the thirty-fivehour work week sounds too grueling--that the citizen is little more than a junkie on the state narcotic. Faced with the perfect storm of swollen pension liabilities and collapsed birth rates, even Continental politicians recognize the need to wean their citizenry off some of these entitlements. But the citizens don't. What do they care if their country will be bankrupt in twenty years and extinct in seventy? Not my problem, man. Call me when I get back from the beach.
In 2006, the Economist reported on the growing tendency of the state to use its power to direct your life in socially beneficial ways--to coerce you into not smoking, eating healthily, etc.--and concluded: "Its champions will say that soft paternalism should only be used for ends that are unarguably good: on the side of sobriety, prudence, and restraint. But America Alone
Page 43
private virtues such as these are as likely to wither as to flourish when public bodies take charge of them."
That's correct. The ends may be "unarguably good" but they lead to other ends that are unarguably bad. It's the case that in a general population some people will neglect their elderly parents and leave their children alone at home while they go off gallivanting. However, by making the government the guarantor of a comfortable old age and supervised day care, you don't end such fecklessness. Rather, by relieving the individual of the need to have "private virtues," you'll ensure that they wither away to the edges of society. Modern social-democratic states are so corrosive of their citizens' wills and so enervating in elevating secondary priorities over primary ones that most of them would not survive even without the Islamists. That's a remarkable thought: Europe doesn't need an enemy; it's losing to its own torpor. A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you have, starting with your sense of self-reliance. There is one (partial) exception to the softening of the West: a nation that still breeds, still puts in a full work week, still maintains a vigorous military. And what's the reaction of the rest of the developed world (plus the Democratic Party, the mainstream American media, and the "international law" groupies on the Supreme Court)? It demands America quit monkeying around and sign up to the suicide pact with the rest of 'em. Take Will Hutton, former editor of the Observer, former Great Thinker to the prewar Tony Blair, and one of the great gasbags of the new Europe. I hasten to add I say that not as a cheap ad hominem insult--or anyway not merely as a cheap ad hominem insult--but because Mr. Hutton is the master of the dead language of statism that differentiates the modern Europhile from most Americans.
In his 2003 book A Declaration of Interdependence: Why America Should Join the World, Mr. Hutton is at pains to establish how much he loves the country: "I enjoy Sheryl Crow and Clint Eastwood alike, delight in Woody Allen .... " I'd wager he's faking at least two of these enthusiasms, and the third, Mr. Allen, is the man the French government hired when they needed a beloved American celebrity to restore their nation's image in America. Only the French government could think an endorsement by Woody Allen would improve their standing with the American people. But, having brandished his credentials, Mr. Hutton says that it's his "affection for the best of America that makes me so angry that it has fallen so far from the standards it expects of itself." Many Americans of Left and
In this long twilight struggle brought into focus by September 11, the hard cultures will survive and the soft won't. In Europe, the soft culture is so pervasive--state pensions, protected jobs, six weeks of paid vacation, lavish unemployment benefits if the thirty-fivehour work week sounds too grueling--that the citizen is little more than a junkie on the state narcotic. Faced with the perfect storm of swollen pension liabilities and collapsed birth rates, even Continental politicians recognize the need to wean their citizenry off some of these entitlements. But the citizens don't. What do they care if their country will be bankrupt in twenty years and extinct in seventy? Not my problem, man. Call me when I get back from the beach.
In 2006, the Economist reported on the growing tendency of the state to use its power to direct your life in socially beneficial ways--to coerce you into not smoking, eating healthily, etc.--and concluded: "Its champions will say that soft paternalism should only be used for ends that are unarguably good: on the side of sobriety, prudence, and restraint. But America Alone
Page 43
private virtues such as these are as likely to wither as to flourish when public bodies take charge of them."
That's correct. The ends may be "unarguably good" but they lead to other ends that are unarguably bad. It's the case that in a general population some people will neglect their elderly parents and leave their children alone at home while they go off gallivanting. However, by making the government the guarantor of a comfortable old age and supervised day care, you don't end such fecklessness. Rather, by relieving the individual of the need to have "private virtues," you'll ensure that they wither away to the edges of society. Modern social-democratic states are so corrosive of their citizens' wills and so enervating in elevating secondary priorities over primary ones that most of them would not survive even without the Islamists. That's a remarkable thought: Europe doesn't need an enemy; it's losing to its own torpor. A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you have, starting with your sense of self-reliance. There is one (partial) exception to the softening of the West: a nation that still breeds, still puts in a full work week, still maintains a vigorous military. And what's the reaction of the rest of the developed world (plus the Democratic Party, the mainstream American media, and the "international law" groupies on the Supreme Court)? It demands America quit monkeying around and sign up to the suicide pact with the rest of 'em. Take Will Hutton, former editor of the Observer, former Great Thinker to the prewar Tony Blair, and one of the great gasbags of the new Europe. I hasten to add I say that not as a cheap ad hominem insult--or anyway not merely as a cheap ad hominem insult--but because Mr. Hutton is the master of the dead language of statism that differentiates the modern Europhile from most Americans.
In his 2003 book A Declaration of Interdependence: Why America Should Join the World, Mr. Hutton is at pains to establish how much he loves the country: "I enjoy Sheryl Crow and Clint Eastwood alike, delight in Woody Allen .... " I'd wager he's faking at least two of these enthusiasms, and the third, Mr. Allen, is the man the French government hired when they needed a beloved American celebrity to restore their nation's image in America. Only the French government could think an endorsement by Woody Allen would improve their standing with the American people. But, having brandished his credentials, Mr. Hutton says that it's his "affection for the best of America that makes me so angry that it has fallen so far from the standards it expects of itself." Many Americans of Left and
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