# Just for Liberals



## zogman (Mar 20, 2002)

From the Grand Forks Herald 6/3/05

VIEWPOINT : Liberalism, EU-style: Don't go there

By David Brooks

WASHINGTON - Forgive me for making a blunt and obvious point, but events in Western Europe slowly are discrediting large swaths of American liberalism.

Most of the policy ideas advocated by American liberals already have been enacted in Europe: generous welfare measures, ample labor protections, highly progressive tax rates, single-payer health care systems, zoning restrictions to limit big retailers, and cradle-to-grave middle-class subsidies supporting everything from child care to pension security. And yet far from thriving, continental Europe has endured a lost decade of relative decline.

Western Europeans seem to be suffering a crisis of confidence. Election results, whether in North Rhine-Westphalia or across France and the Netherlands, reveal electorates who have lost faith in their leaders, who are anxious about declining quality of life, who feel extraordinarily vulnerable to foreign competition - from the Chinese, the Americans, the Turks, even the Polish plumbers.

Anybody who has lived in Europe knows how delicious European life can be. But it is not the absolute standard of living that determines a people's morale, but the momentum. It is happier to live in a poor country that is moving forward - where expectations are high - than it is to live in an affluent country that is looking back.

Right now, Europeans seem to look to the future with more fear than hope. As Anatole Kaletsky noted in The Times of London, in continental Europe "unemployment has been stuck between 8 and 11 percent since 1991, and growth has reached 3 percent only once in those 14 years."

The Western European standard of living is about a third lower than the American standard of living, and it's sliding. European output per capita is less than that of 46 of the 50 American states and about on par with Arkansas. There is little prospect of robust growth returning any time soon.

Once, it was plausible to argue that the European quality of life made up for the economic underperformance, but those arguments look more and more strained, in part because demographic trends make even the current conditions unsustainable. Europe's population is aging and shrinking. By 2040, the European median age will be around 50. Nearly a third of the population will be older than 65. Public spending on retirees will have to grow by a third, sending Europe into a vicious spiral of higher taxes and less growth.

This is the context for the French "no" vote on the EU constitution. This is the psychology of stagnation that shaped voter perceptions. It wasn't mostly the constitution itself voters were rejecting. Polls reveal they were articulating a broader malaise. The highest "no" votes came from the most vulnerable, from workers and the industrial north. The "no" campaign united the fearful right led by Jean-Marie Le Pen with the fearful left, led by the Communists.

Influenced by anxiety about the future, every faction across the political spectrum found something to feel menaced by. For the Socialist left, it was the threat of economic liberalization. For parts of the right, it was the threat of Turkey. For populists, it was the condescension of the Brussels elite. For others, it was the prospect of a centralized European superstate. Many of these fears were mutually exclusive. The only commonality was fear itself, the desire to hang on to what they have in the face of change and tumult all around.

The core fact is that the European model is foundering under the fact that billions of people are willing to work harder than the Europeans are. Europeans clearly love their way of life, but don't know how to sustain it.

Over the last few decades, American liberals have lauded the German model or the Swedish model or the European model. But these models are not flexible enough for the modern world. They encourage people to cling fiercely to entitlements their nation cannot afford. And far from breeding a confident, progressive outlook, they breed a reactionary fear of the future that comes in left- and right-wing varieties - a defensiveness, a tendency to lash out ferociously at anybody who proposes fundamental reform or at any group, like immigrants, that alters the fabric of life.

This is the chief problem with the welfare state, which has nothing to do with the success or efficiency of any individual program. The liberal project of the postwar era has bred a stultifying conservatism, a fear of dynamic flexibility, a greater concern for guarding what exists than for creating what doesn't.

That's a truth that applies just as much on this side of the pond.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Brooks writes for the New York Times.


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## Plainsman (Jul 30, 2003)

If your a liberal in the UK here is what liberals can do for you there. How far behind are we?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4581871.stm


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## Gohon (Feb 14, 2005)

Plainsman said:


> If your a liberal in the UK here is what liberals can do for you there. How far behind are we?
> 
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4581871.stm


LOL ............... gonna be interesting to see which manufactures wind up on this new European assault weapons band. I wonder if the Swiss army knife will be labeled full auto knife or maybe just AKA assault knife.


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## tail chaser (Sep 24, 2004)

I'm proud to call myself liberal, that doesn't mean I agree with anything posted here. Once agian the term Liberal is being thrown around with a broad stroke. These are not americans with liberal beliefs they are flippen crazy!

TC


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## KEN W (Feb 22, 2002)

Typical Right Wing Extremism.


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## zogman (Mar 20, 2002)

:eyeroll: "You want the truth, You want the truth, You can't handle the truth!" :lol:

Ken at your age seach for the truth and " the truth will set you free"! :beer:


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## KEN W (Feb 22, 2002)

:rollin:


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## Plainsman (Jul 30, 2003)

The UK knife proposals are being pushed by the UK liberal party. I guess they have liberal conservative spats over there also. It would be my guess that a liberal here in the good old USA would be a conservative over there. If a few far left liberals get that crazy over here, I know liberals like those that freqeuent nodak outdoors will come to our aid.

TC I agree they are crazy, and don't come close to representing liberals over here. OF course on a national basis liberals are much crazier than liberals in North Dakota. Kalifornia for example.

What's with Kerry, does he have something legitimate, or is he loosing his mind? I'm talking about the memo he seen in the UK that said Bush knew there were no weapons in Iraq etc.


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## Gohon (Feb 14, 2005)

> Typical Right Wing Extremism


Yeah, shame on you zogman........ you have a lot of nerve posting facts of the situation over there.... you.....you....you extremist you..... :lol:


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## pointer99 (Jan 16, 2004)

Gohon said:


> > Typical Right Wing Extremism
> 
> 
> Yeah, shame on you zogman........ you have a lot of nerve posting facts of the situation over there.... you.....you....you extremist you..... :lol:


yeah.....*never let facts get in the way in an argument. lol. *

pointer


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