LOL…. This is going to go over huge in Orange County… especially this first para, from the Orange County Register, [1] we see Mark Steyn, this morning…
I don’t believe the U.S. Constitution includes a right to abortion or gay marriage or a zillion other things the Left claims to detect emanating from the penumbra, but I find it sweetly touching that in America even political radicalism has to be framed as an appeal to constitutional tradition from the powdered-wig era.
In Europe, by contrast, one reason why there’s no politically significant pro-life movement is because, in a world where constitutions have the life expectancy of an Oldsmobile, great questions are just seen as part of the general tide, the way things are going, no sense trying to fight it. And, by the time you realize you have to, the tide’s usually up to your neck.
So Americans should be thankful they have one of the last functioning nation-states. Europeans, because they’ve been so inept at exercising it, no longer believe in national sovereignty, whereas it would never occur to Americans not to. This profoundly different attitude to the nation-state underpins, in turn, Euro-American attitudes to transnational institutions such as the United Nations.
It’s an interesting thought I’ll pour myself a second cuppa, take a few minutes to explore with you.
My first thought is Billy Beck and I could bounce the implications of that around for hours, and I suspect come to no real conclusion.
From my own POV; It is inarguable that the nation state is ripe for abuse. And boy, has it’s power been abused. No argument whatsoever on that score. Many of the bloggers you read daily have made a name for themselves blogging such abuses. Such abuses are demonstrated daily.
At the same time, however, it is also inarguable that for all of the abuses of government, our government as originally designed, is the best hope for freedom this world has yet seen. This is a point that is also demonstrated daily.
The irony here is that while some, like Billy, scream at volume ten about the abuses of the government and it’s infringements on individual liberty..(And he does so properly, I think) who else but a relatively powerful American government has the ability to defend and enforce those freedoms from powers elsewhere in the world who would, given the chance, eliminate those freedoms… and often as not, eliminating the people demanding them, as well?
One more irony; Many like Billy rankle that the government isn’t small and isolationist enough to suit them. And certainly, when this country was founded, an isolationist approach, such as one encouraged by Washington, back in the day, was an acceptable and workable answer. Thereby, a weaker, more powerless government was all that was needed to deal out such policy. The kind of aggressions against us as a people, and against our freedoms from foreign sources, were not enough of a worry to need much of a defense. That’s the ideal.
Thing is, that ideal no longer exists. For one thing, back in that day world-wide travel was hardly the trivial matter it is today. We didn’t have to worry, in the late 1700’s, about planes flying into populated buildings, or trucks loaded with explosives, and so on. We didn’t have to be concerned about Foreign invaders showing up from places halfway around the world in a matter of hours, to engage in battle with us on our our soil.
These are not situations which are responded to reliably by rugged individualist Joe Sixpack and his trusty Double Barrel Shotgun. Certainly, Joe can usually be of some help…. (If the government will but allow Joe to be armed…. and yes, that’s another abuse of government) … but the fact is, he’s not up to the task of defending the whole country, and the freedoms its people hold dear, even when joined by millions of his fellows.
The point I am making, here, no other entity is large enough to deal with such threats, but the nation-state. Steyn makes it too, by way of comparison:
Aside from Britain and France, the Europeans cannot project power in any meaningful way anywhere. When they sign on to an enterprise they claim to believe in – shoring up Afghanistan’s fledgling post-Taliban democracy – most of them send token forces under constrained rules of engagement that prevent them doing anything more than manning the photocopier back at the base.
If America were to follow the Europeans and maintain only shriveled attenuated residual military capacity, the world would very quickly be nastier and bloodier, and far more unstable. It’s not just Americans and Iraqis and Afghans who owe a debt of thanks to the U.S. soldier but all the Europeans grown plump and prosperous in a globalized economy guaranteed by the most benign hegemon in history.
Now, whoa… slow down a minute… Before you think I’m leaning left and arguing purely on the idea of a big intrusive government, think again…, take a deep breath and read.
You see, first of all, defense is a constitutionally mandated function of government. Secondly, equally important to size, is what that government is based on… and what it is defending.
Look again what Steyn says on that point:
In Europe, by contrast, one reason why there’s no politically significant pro-life movement is because, in a world where constitutions have the life expectancy of an Oldsmobile, great questions are just seen as part of the general tide, the way things are going, no sense trying to fight it. And, by the time you realize you have to, the tide’s usually up to your neck.
The cause of that is what the government(s) is (are) founded in, and in turn, what the Europeans see as the purpose of government. They’ve not being driven by the principles of freedom, they’re being driven by the whim of the moment. They have nothing to anchor them. Such a sand foundation is why they’ve fallen variously into Fascism, and socialism, and their offshoots, several times over the last 100 years, and we have not, as a nation.
No question, that we have also been driven both right and left over the years, but that anchor, the constitution and the principles that guided it’s authoring, have held us steadier than cousins in Europe.
(One can also point to the problems in Europe to include the cultural degradation that the governments there have allowed for in the name of ‘openness’ and that’s a key to all this, as well… for one thing, the freedoms which we defend are cultural values in nature, as I have said several times previously, here. But we’ll get back to that at some future time)
Argue against the abuses of government if you will, my friends, argue against how we need protection from abuses against our freedoms from within… from government… and I’ll support you. But arguing for Anarchy, arguing for the destruction of the nation state is, ironically, and in reality an argument against freedom, because without that nation-state, there’s nothing to protect that freedom. And as we have seen of late, it does need that protection from without.
And without that, we’d have none of the other blessings which Steyn describes:
But on this Thanksgiving the rest of the world ought to give thanks to American national sovereignty, too. When something terrible and destructive happens – a tsunami hits Indonesia, an earthquake devastates Pakistan – the United States can project itself anywhere on the planet within hours and start saving lives, setting up hospitals and restoring the water supply.
And we have many freinds around the world thereby, which in turn makes America safer from attack. Nothing like a few friends in a bar fight to keep things in hand. ( Which would seem to includ Europe… once the wolf starts howling at the door… Or more correctly, the Russian Bear as we saw with Sarkozy, the other day.)
I wonder how all this will play out in Orange. Or Olympia.