I haven’t actually weighed in on JD Vance’s scolding of our European allies yet. I disagree with one of his fundamental points—that the United States, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom share their regard for freedom of speech, religion, assembly, etc.
France, Germany, and the United Kingdom are ethnic states. We are not. Our greatest difference from our European allies is contained in this passage:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
The reality is that our European allies think about things like freedom of speech, etc. differently than we do. Nowhere is freedom of speech so expansive and absolute as in the United States. The UK has its Official Secrets Act which allows the government to bar the media from publishing things it doesn’t care to have them publish. In the UK you can sue a newspaper for slander if it publishes something untrue about you; here you would need to show actual malice. We regard what is normal in the UK as an abridgement of freedom of the press. Germany suppresses certain speech. The UK and Germany still have established churches. The “freedom to cross the land” is secured by Magna Carta in the UK; here we call that “trespassing”. The UK and Germany do not have birthright citizenship. In Germany there are people who were born in Germany, whose parents were both born in Germany, and whose grandparents were all born in Germany who are not German citizens. The list goes on.
Our alliances with European countries are “marriages of convenience”. They are not based on shared values. That’s propaganda.
I tended to view Vance’s speech as a brushback pitch after the common European portrayal that America is sliding towards authoritarianism (especially whenever Republicans are in power).
Their is some validity to this European view; but Europeans forget Matthew 7:3, “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?” — as Vance so impolitely pointed out, Europeans do a lot of things that many Americans think have aspects of authoritarianism.
I don’t recall whose wisecrack it was but fascism is continually descending on the United States and landing in Europe.
But that passage from Jefferson certainly derives from Europeans like Locke, Montesquieu and Hutcheson. I think there is a relationship from which a cross critique is interesting, but there is divergence. Perhaps the main points are:
I think America diverged demographically starting with slavery and then with large immigration flows from 1880 to 1924.
American political structures are bound to 17th and 18th century political philosophies, while continental Europe would move on to be shaped by the French Revolution, Napoleon, and Marx.
America has stronger Constitutionalism in that it has a strong judiciary that enforces the (perhaps antiquated) Constitution. I don’t think American free speech is radical because it is what Americans want, it is radical because it is what the Courts have decided over their wishes.
Very few if any European countries adopted America’s separation of powers or checks and balances model, particularly with strong judiciary.
In Europe, popular political participation emerged only after the extension and consolidation of central state power and bureaucratic specialization. In America, the order was reversed, resulting in a more fragmented central state apparatus, either dependent on political institutions or taking place entirely outside of them.
As to that last point, attacks on the bureaucracy are attacks on central government capacity. That’s not the stuff of dictatorship. Maybe it’s just the next step towards a libertarian hellscape of crypto money and DYI medical drugs.
Great comment, PD.
I’m skeptical that continental Europe derived anything from Locke after the French Revolution. I would add that continental European countries have civil code legal systems rather than the common law system we share with the Brits.
Something that Americans and Europeans mutually misunderstand about each other is that in the U. S. the states are not departments of the federal government. That arrangement is incomprehensible to the Europeans.
One thing about your observations. They pertain to Russia, too, and I don’t believe I’ve heard people braying about our shared values with them.
“As to that last point, attacks on the bureaucracy are attacks on central government capacity. That’s not the stuff of dictatorship.”
Replacing them with cronies is, especially when said cronies dont have any competence in the area where they are replacements. Also, having all of the decisions made by one, unelected person is very much the stuff of an authoritarian government.
Steve
@Dave, It’s not at all clear that Russia is part of the same European culture as an historically Orthodox Christian state. Also Turkey and much of the Balkans.
Rousseau, with his own social contract theory, was more influential on the continent, but I don’t think it’s just a matter of tracing trends of philosophers. European centralization and rationalization of power took place in the presence of powerful feudal institutions and anachronisms that needed to be overcome and the useful parts absorbed. What we might call liberals were willing to support centralization in the monarchy to the extent it broke down these obstructions. There were no feudal social institutions in the U.S. and thus the form of liberalism that arose was limited government.
Is there actually a “European culture”? I think there’s a French culture, a German culture, an Italian culture, etc. but not a European one. What I think has been going on in Europe for the last 50 years or so is a continuation of the German project to dominate Europe, this time using economic means rather than military force.
Having spent considerable time (working) in Britain, France, German, and Italy, IMO U. S. culture is more similar to British culture and more similar to French culture than it is to German culture. I think U. S. culture is more similar to all them than it is to Russia. I think they’re all different countries with their own cultures.
BTW, historically Russia has thought of itself as the successor to Rome. Cf. “Third Rome theory”.