DREAMING OF A QUICK DEATH (via Robert Schwartz):

Casting Europe as a Virtuous Upstart: a review of THE EUROPEAN DREAM: How Europe’s Vision of the Future Is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream By Jeremy Rifkin (RICHARD BERNSTEIN, NY Times)

Here is the overall idea: "While the American Spirit is tiring and languishing in the past, a new European Dream is being born,'' he writes. That dream "emphasizes community relationships over individual autonomy, cultural diversity over assimilation, quality of life over the accumulation of wealth, sustainable development over unlimited material growth, deep play over unrelenting toil, universal human rights and the rights of nature over property rights, and global cooperation over the unilateral exercise of power."

That would seem to be quite a place, Mr. Rifkin's Europe, and some aspects are real enough, at least in some of the many variable countries that make up what Mr. Rifkin calls Europe. But this imputation of a unified and homogeneous Europe is an initial conceptual problem. The European Union includes Poland and Portugal, Britain and Greece, which are as different from each other as each is from the United States. Those differences call into sharp question many of Mr. Rifkin's assertions, like this one: "The U.S. foreign policy is light-years away
from the foreign policy orientation of the 25 member states that make up the European Union."

Surely, there are some ways in which the international orientation of a collection of small and medium-sized countries will be substantially different from that of a superpower. But that phrase "light-years away" is a typical Rifkinian overstatement, even when applied to countries like France and Germany, which vigorously opposed the United States on Iraq. These same countries, after all, cooperated with Washington during the last decade or so in Kuwait, Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan, including regarding the use of force in every instance. Beyond that, a solid majority of the 25 members of the European Union supported the United States on Iraq and contributed troops, wisely or not, to the
coalition.

Some of what Mr. Rifkin describes as important European-American differences have been shrinking even in recent weeks. Powerful German labor unions have agreed to work longer hours without additional pay, a recognition that Germany, Europe's economic engine, may be in for more "unrelenting toil" and less "deep play" (what Mr. Rifkin means by that profound-sounding concept remains vague) if it is to restore its damaged competitiveness. German unemployment has been more than 10 percent for several years, even as unemployment benefits have been shrinking; that country's budget deficits have exceeded the levels allowed by the European Union for three consecutive years; and its leftist government
has been cutting back on social welfare.

Meanwhile, Germany, like the rest of Europe, has an aging population and a low birth rate, which, unless something is done, mean, as Mr. Rifkin puts it, that "the European project will die." And, as Mr. Rifkin notes, the remedy for the looming demographic crisis, namely large-scale immigration from non-European countries, is powerfully opposed by majorities in Europe and by important minorities whose members have grouped themselves into numerous right-wing political formations with racist and nationalist appeal.

Rifkin has been an anti-human envirolooney for a long time now, so his embrace of a dying Europe is predictable. It was a great pleasure when he was on Diane Rehm a few weeks ago that even guest host Steve Roberts wanted to punch his lights out for running down America.

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 2, 2004 6:15 AM