Artikel druckenThe advent of the Obama administration brings this question before the nation: Do we want the United States to be like Europe? President Obama and his leading intellectual heroes are the American equivalent of Europe's social democrats. There's nothing sinister about that. Not only are social democrats intellectually respectable, the European model has worked in many ways. There's a lot to like – a lot to love – about day-to-day life in Europe.
But the European model can't continue to work much longer. Europe's catastrophically low birth rates and soaring immigration from cultures with alien values will see to that.
So let me rephrase the question. If we could avoid Europe's demographic problems, do we want the United States to be like Europe?
I argue for the answer „no“, but not for economic reasons. The European model has indeed created sclerotic economies and it would be a bad idea to imitate them. But I want to focus on another problem. It drains too much of the life from life.
I start from this premise: I suspect that most Americans agree that the phrase „a life well-lived“ has meaning. Since happiness is a word that gets thrown around too casually, the phrase I'll use from now on is „deep satisfaction“. I'm talking about the kinds of things that we look back upon when we reach old age.
Deep satisfactions in life. To become a source of deep satisfaction, a human activity has to meet some stringent requirements. It has to have been important (we don't get deep satisfaction from trivial things). You have to have put a lot of effort into it. And you have to have been responsible for the consequences.
There aren't many activities in life that can satisfy those three requirements. If we ask what are the institutions through which human beings achieve deep satisfaction in life, the answer is that there are just four: family, community, vocation, and faith.
It is not necessary for any individual to make use of all four institutions, nor do I array them in a hierarchy. The stuff of life – the elemental events surrounding birth, death, raising children, fulfilling one's personal potential, dealing with adversity, intimate relationships – occurs within those four institutions.
Seen in this light, the goal of social policy is to ensure that those institutions are robust and vital. And that's what's wrong with the European model. It doesn't do that. It enfeebles every single one of them.
Taking the trouble out of things. Almost anything that government does in social policy can be characterized as taking some of the trouble out of things. Sometimes, this is a good idea. Having an effective police force takes some of the trouble out of walking home safely at night, and I'm glad it does.
The problem is this: Every time the government takes some of the trouble out of performing the functions of family, community, vocation, and faith, it also strips those institutions of some of their vitality. It's inevitable. Families are not vital because the day-to-day tasks of raising children and being a good spouse are so much fun, but because the family has responsibility for doing important things that won't get done unless the family does them. Communities are not vital because it's so much fun to respond to our neighbors' needs, but because the community has the responsibility for doing important things that won't get done unless the community does them. Once that imperative has been met – family and community really do have the action – then an elaborate web of social norms, expectations, rewards, and punishments evolves over time that supports families and communities in performing their functions. When the government says it will take some of the trouble out of doing the things that families and communities evolved to do, it inevitably takes some of the action away from them, and the web frays, and eventually disintegrates.
When the government takes the trouble out of being a spouse and parent, it doesn't affect the sources of deep satisfaction for the CEO. Rather, it makes life difficult for the janitor. A man who is holding down a menial job and thereby supporting a wife and children is doing something authentically important with his life. He should take deep satisfaction from that, and be praised by his community for doing so. If that same man lives under a system that says that the children of the woman he sleeps with will be taken care of whether or not he contributes, then that status goes away. I am not describing some theoretical outcome. I am describing American neighborhoods where, once, working at a menial job to provide for his family made a man proud and gave him status in his community, and where now it doesn't.
Scandinavia and Western Europe pride themselves on their „child-friendly“ policies, providing generous child allowances, free day-care centers, and long maternity leaves. Those same countries have fertility rates far below replacement and plunging marriage rates. Those same countries are ones in which jobs are most carefully protected by government regulation and mandated benefits are most lavish. And they, with only a few exceptions, are countries where work is most often seen as a necessary evil, and where the proportions of people who say they love their jobs are the lowest.
What's happening? Call it the Europe syndrome. Last April I had occasion to speak in Zurich, where I made some of these same points. After the speech, a few members of the audience approached and said plainly that the phrase „a life well-lived“ did not have meaning for them. They were having a great time with their current sex partner and new BMW and the vacation home in Mallorca, and saw no voids in their lives that needed filling.
It was fascinating to hear it said to my face, but not surprising. It conformed to both journalistic and scholarly accounts of a spreading European mentality. I'm not talking about all Europeans, by any means. That mentality goes something like this: Human beings are a collection of chemicals that activate and, after a period of time, deactivate. The purpose of life is to while away the intervening time as pleasantly as possible.
If that's the purpose of life, then work is not a vocation, but something that interferes with the higher good of leisure. If that's the purpose of life, why have a child, when children are so much trouble? Why spend it worrying about neighbors? What could possibly be the attraction of a religion that says otherwise?
Europe's military impotence. The same self-absorption in whiling away life as pleasantly as possible explains why Europe has become a continent that no longer celebrates greatness. When life is a matter of whiling away the time, the concept of greatness is irritating and threatening. What explains Europe's military impotence? I am simplifying, but this has to be part of it: If the purpose of life is to while away the time as pleasantly as possible, what can be worth dying for?
I stand in awe of Europe's past. Which makes Europe's present all the more dispiriting. And should make its present something that concentrates our minds wonderfully, for every element of the Europe Syndrome is infiltrating American life as well.
We are seeing that infiltration appear most obviously among those who are most openly attached to the European model – namely, America's social democrats, heavily represented in university faculties and the most fashionable neighborhoods of our great cities. Among those who self-identify as liberal or extremely liberal, secularism is close to European levels. Birth rates are close to European levels. Charitable giving is close to European levels. There is every reason to believe that when Americans embrace the European model, they begin to behave like Europeans. America's elites have to ask themselves how much they really do value what has made America exceptional, and what they are willing to do to preserve it.
American exceptionalism is not just something that Americans claim for themselves. Historically, Americans have been different as a people, even peculiar. I'm thinking of qualities such as American optimism even when there doesn't seem to be any good reason for it. That's quite uncommon among the peoples of the world. There is the striking lack of class envy in America. That's just about unique, certainly compared to European countries, and something that drives European intellectuals crazy. And then there is perhaps the most important symptom of all, the signature of American exceptionalism – the assumption by most Americans that they are in control of their own destinies. It is hard to think of a more inspiriting quality for a population to possess, and the American population still possesses it to an astonishing degree.
Live a free life. The exceptionalism has not been a figment of anyone's imagination, and it has been wonderful. But it isn't something in the water that has made us that way. It comes from the cultural capital generated by the system that the Founders laid down, a system that says people must be free to live life as they see fit and to be responsible for the consequences of their actions; that it is not the government's job to protect people from themselves or to stage-manage how people interact with each other. Discard the system that created the cultural capital, and the qualities we love about Americans can go away. In some circles, they are going away.