European settlement of the colonies that would become the United States began roughly 500 years ago. European elites did not settle in those colonies. Although we did have European gentry the European nobility who settled here were not landed. They, too, depended on acceptance, elections, and performance. The United States is what evolved from western European countries without those elites. We created distinctive institutions and practices to replace them. That has been well-documented.
We don’t have a hereditary aristocracy. We don’t have established churches. We have an abundance of land. We developed our own self-defense militias and local governments assume a much greater role here than in most European countries.
The editors of the Wall Street Journal observe concerning Sec. of State Rubio’s remarks at the Munich Conference:
America and Europe are now at another inflection point. Mr. Rubio offered the Administration’s by now familiar critique about Europe’s policy mistakes on mass migration, defense, climate and energy.
But he rooted that criticism in the shared history and values of Western civilization. “We are connected spiritually and we are connected culturally,” he said. “We believe that Europe must survive, because the two great wars of the last century serve for us as history’s constant reminder that ultimately, our destiny is and will always be intertwined with yours.”
Mr. Rubio outlined a renewed trans-Atlantic alliance “ready to defend our people, to safeguard our interests, and to preserve the freedom of action that allows us to shape our own destiny—not one that exists to operate a global welfare state and atone for the purported sins of past generations.”
Judging by the comments by the EU Foreign Minister reported by the Associated Press:
MUNICH (AP) — A top European Union official on Sunday rejected the notion that Europe faces “civilizational erasure,” pushing back at criticism of the continent by the Trump administration.
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas addressed the Munich Security Conference a day after U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio offered a somewhat reassuring message to European allies. He struck a less aggressive tone than Vice President JD Vance did in lecturing them at the same gathering last year but maintained a firm tone on Washington’s intent to reshape the trans-Atlantic alliance and push its policy priorities.
Sec. Rubio’s remarks fell on deaf ears and rightly so. America’s culture and Europe’s cultures began to diverge nearly 500 years ago. We are a very different place from the United Kingdom, France, or Germany now and, not to put too fine a point on it, we don’t get to define their cultures. Only they can do that.
Across the Atlantic this difference repeatedly appears less as disagreement over interests than as mutual incomprehension over moral language. American officials tend to describe policies in universal terms—fairness, rules, legitimacy derived from present consent—and assume those categories travel easily. European leaders more often speak in historical terms like continuity, stability, social order, or responsibility shaped by accumulated experience. Each side hears the other as making claims it does not believe it is making: Americans think they are stating neutral principles while Europeans hear instruction; Europeans think they are describing prudence while Americans hear evasion. The result is not simply conflict but misinterpretation. We are allies, but we do not reason about public legitimacy in quite the same way and rhetoric that assumes a shared civilizational conscience therefore lands badly even when the strategic relationship itself remains intact.
