Posted Wednesday, August 12, 2009 11:25 AM
Europhobia Is Only Getting Uglier
Michael Freedman
- the last paragraph = conclusion
All this obscures what's really under debate here: what kind of health-care system─and what kind of policies─will make America a stronger, more resilient, more prosperous nation. America is not going to become Europe, much less a fascist dictatorship. It will do things its own way. But dare anyone say there is virtue in at least considering how our allies do things─and even cherry-picking and adapting from the best that others have to offer? Earlier this year, the scholar Charles Murray gave an address to the American Enterprise Institute, in acceptance of the conservative think tank's most prestigious award, in which he warned that “the possibility that irreversible damage will be done to the American project over the next few years is real." His argument was that "the European model is fundamentally flawed because, despite its material successes, it is not suited to the way that human beings flourish─it does not conduce to Aristotelian happiness." That may be, but the demagoguery from many of his compatriots on the political right risk ignoring what modern Europe has to offer, all for the sake of some sort of ideological je ne sais quoi.
All this obscures what's really under debate here: what kind of health-care system─and what kind of policies─will make America a stronger, more resilient, more prosperous nation. America is not going to become Europe, much less a fascist dictatorship. It will do things its own way. But dare anyone say there is virtue in at least considering how our allies do things─and even cherry-picking and adapting from the best that others have to offer? Earlier this year, the scholar Charles Murray gave an address to the American Enterprise Institute, in acceptance of the conservative think tank's most prestigious award, in which he warned that “the possibility that irreversible damage will be done to the American project over the next few years is real." His argument was that "the European model is fundamentally flawed because, despite its material successes, it is not suited to the way that human beings flourish─it does not conduce to Aristotelian happiness." That may be, but the demagoguery from many of his compatriots on the political right risk ignoring what modern Europe has to offer, all for the sake of some sort of ideological je ne sais quoi.