Eurotrash

Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent

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Well, I managed to squeeze in one more book in 2024, bringing me to 100 on my official list. I've done better in previous years; we'll see how 2025 goes.

Consumer note: Amazon has the hardcover for a mere $5.62 as I type. You could do worse.

The author, David Harsanyi, is one of my favorites. Here, he explains (basically) why the USA should ignore the constant whines of 'Europhiles' who wonder why we can't be more like that prosperous, cosmopolitan, ecological, left-wing continent across the pond.

Harsanyi can be credibly accused of cherry-picking his data and anecdotes, only mentioning the stuff that supports his thesis. Are European countries really the totalitarian hellholes he paints? Sure, they have serious problems. All countries do. Some problems worse than others? Yup, sure.

But he points a pretty damning picture, chapter by chapter, on how Europe is worse: a lot of people fall through the cracks of their ballyhooed healthcare systems; the continent is rife with ethnic and racial strife; their commitment to free expression is increasingly shrinking; demographically, they are headed for fiscal disaster as fewer young people pay for the pensions of more and more geezers; the European Union is an autocratic nightmare, out of democratic control; their "green" environmental policies are unsustainable. And more.

One country Harsanyi doesn't mention much: Switzerland. (Another one of my favorite writers, Kevin D. Williamson, is a 'Swissophile'.) Going through the index entries…

· Page 20: he admits the Swiss score high on the World Happiness Report; he attributes that to their wealth. (Other European countries report similar wealth-linked happiness.)

· Page 159: Switzerland is one of the countries where "faith is dying", but churches are propped up by taxation. (Wikipedia says this happens at the canton level,)

· On a related note, page 210 notes that a Swiss census revealed that religious mothers were bearing "nearly twice" as many children as non-religious mothers.

· Page 221: Assisted suicide is legal in Switzerland, and there are quite a few Europeans who travel there to be killed. Honest.

· And, finally, page 225: Switzerland (similarly to most other European countries) kills the vast majority of unborn babies who test positive for Down syndrome.

As another measure, I looked at the latest Cato/Fraser Institute Human Freedom Index, ranking most of the world's countries, personal and economic liberty-wise (as of 2022). Make of this what you will: The USA is in 17th place in their rankings scoring worse than the European nations of Switzerland, Denmark, Luxembourg, Ireland, Finland, Sweden, Iceland, Estonia, Norway, Germany, Netherlands, and Czechia. And we are tied with the United Kingdom.

As a mostly-libertarian guy, I'd say we could take some lessons from some European countries. While Harsanyi is telling an important story, he's not telling the whole story.


Last Modified 2025-01-03 6:53 AM EST