Wild over the French and Dutch?

Right-wing pundits are going wild over the French and Dutch rejecting the EU constitution. They're happy, of course, that EU unity has suffered a setback, since it promises that the EU will be less of a threat to US economic and political hegemony than they had feared.

They're not gloating, however, because they (with reason) see the
rejection of the constitution as a rejection of neoliberal policies, and they don't want Americans to get any ideas. Right-wing apologist George Will and one of his colleagues at the Washington Post, David "Bobo" Brooks at the NYTimes, and a number of others have gone on the warpath against social democracy and (at least for Brooks) the very idea of liberalism. Brooks says:

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 et al. laud the US for having higher levels of economic growth and lower levels of social support (and, they neglect to mention, higher levels of poverty and lower levels of health) compared to Europe.

However, it's not at all clear that Europe's economic problems are due to the welfare state, and it ought to be very clear that Bush's policies are putting the US in grave economic danger!

In my not-so-well-educated view, I think that this setback for the EU is actually positive for the EU. The technocratic "elites" that Brooks and other conservatives are bashing, mainly to polish their own ersatz-populist credentials, are actually people who think a lot like Brooks does.

The EU can and will develop a constitution that is simpler--looking more like our own constitution and less like an omnibus spending bill--more democratic, and more progressive. The EU will continue to gain strength and to lend legitimacy to models of social democracy. (Not that that's ideal ...) The EU will get beyond this, and it will continue to challenge the US. This will be especially true if it's able to make the breakthroughs in clean, sustainable energy production that Bush doesn't want the US to make. How deep is that grave Mr. "President"?