Monk

It turns out that the European welfare state isn't just a nice way to lend a helping hand. It does much more to promote intergenerational upward mobility than does an American positive attitude and a culture of achievement. The three most mobile countries in the survey were Denmark, Norway, and Finland—Scandinavian social democracies with cradle-to-grave public services. Four- and five-year-olds in Finland, for example, mostly attend high-quality publicly subsidized preschools irrespective of income, with poor children and rich children getting education that's of equal quality. In the U.S., good center-based child care costs over $10,000 a year—beyond the reach of many parents. Consequently, we have class stratification already in place on the first day of kindergarten. The situation isn't helped by the fact that our system sends the least-experienced, least-qualified teachers to the poorest schools. Nor by the fact that to grow up in a poor neighborhood in the United States means not only to grow up with humble homes, but to grow up in a dangerous environment. Europeans can avail themselves of excellent public transportation while Americans too poor to own a car suffer from crippling social and economic disadvantages, and European citizens from all walks of life can enjoy basically similar levels of health care.

...

The U.S. has spent a huge portion of its history as the richest nation on earth, largely thanks to the highest levels of educational attainment in the world. We're so accustomed to that status, in fact, that there's little awareness that it's anything other than a natural part of the universe. But while the U.S. remains richer than most European countries, our educational lead has slipped away and there's good reason to believe that average living standards are now higher in the Netherlands and Scandinavia. But Americans cling to the idea that inequality and sky-high child-poverty rates are the price we have to pay for the social mobility we crave. In fact, the reverse is true—those are the very things that have made the United States an unusually class-stratified society.

-- Matthew Yglesias for The Daily Beast

Along with the God question, another issue that has been resurgent is whether America should be more like Europe when it comes to social welfare. I imagine that just size alone makes the idea of Europeanization more difficult, but more than that, I'm afraid the issue of race has always been critical in keeping American democracy from realizing its more egalitarian aspirations.

If we were just a population of Anglos, we might well have a substative welfare state. Unfortunately, our white population still holds a disparate share of the wealth and power, and there is too much distrust and even antipathy toward latinos and blacks. Although it is exciting to wonder if the election of our first black president may have opened up the game, a Denmarkian America is probably still a distant dream. But I suppose we might be able to continue to make slow progress, and President Obama helps to show that it is at least possible.

Which reminds me of that darkly humorous bit on Snopes.com that I saw on my Freinds Page this morning: Does a prophecy that a black man would inhabit the White house "when pigs fly" tie the Obama presidency to the swine flu?

"French Theory: How Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, & Co. Transformed the Intellectual Life of the United States” by Francois Cusset

Stanley Fish applies his dialectical gifts on DECONSTRUCTION and the language of social constructs, in his review of the above book, which might be a good brain-buzz while remaining within the comprehension of a modest Liberal Arts student. I'm mostly convinced that I definitely need to get Fish's book on Paradise Lost.

The book is supposedly a defense of deconstruction against its uses as a political weapon, with Cusset maintaining that it is merely a critical perspective. However, I can see why conservatives would be more up in arms over deconstruction. After all, this is the party that holds more faithfully to the idea of self-evident truths, especially as embodied in the American way with its honoring of rights and property, and which is therefore more likely to be aggrieved by a discipline which denies knowable truths and holds all truths to be convenient creations.

Even so, I suppose the answer is to distinguish between philosphy and politics. Free-spirited inquiry befits philosophical investigations. Propositions that get stamped with the force of law through our democratic processes are another matter. Although the relationship between philosophy and politics may become more or less volatile at different times, I don't see anything inconsistent in this distinction. We can debate furiously over truths, and we can respect and abide the outcomes of our democratic contests.

( Fish )

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“Religiosity now seems at least as important for public office as leadership qualities,” said Karl Kaiser, a German political scientist. “The entrance condition for the American presidential race is being religious. If you’re not, you have no chance, which troubles Europeans.”

-- Roger Cohen for The New York Times

It troubles me, too.

Nevertheless, I will take this opportunity to remark on one of the political quibbles of the day. The fundamentalist Huckabee tried to taint Romney with the proposition that Mormons believe that Satan is Jesus's brother. I just want to note that I actually rather like that theological story.

This story would cast us in the middle of an epic sibling rivalry, this war between good and evil. It also echoes the story of Cain and Abel. It just makes for a more solid and tight narrative. It helps that I am in the middle of "Paradise Lost", so that I am feeling some of the vibes of this cosmic drama.

( Cohen )

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France's Presdident Nicolas Sarkozy is a jogger, or at least he is taking it up. Apparently, this is considered un-French and is a subject of some light humor:

Sarkozy has fueled a French suspicion that running is for self-centered individualists like Americans, reports Charles Bremner, Paris correspondent for the Times of London.

"Patrick Mignon, a sports sociologist, noted that French intellectuals had always held sport in contempt, while totalitarian regimes cultivated physical fitness," Bremner writes.

"Jogging is of course about performance and individualism, values that are traditionally ascribed to the right," Odile Baudrier, editor of V02 magazine, a sports publication, told Libération.

The British press is having a wonderful time with all this.

"The Sarkozy jog, say his critics, is a sad imitation of the habits of American presidents, and a capitulation to 'le défi Américain' (a phrase that was the title of a book published here as 'The American Challenge') as bad as the influx of Hollywood movies," writes Boris Johnson, a British member of Parliament and confirmed jogger, in the Telegraph.

"I am not deterred . . . by the accusation that jogging is right-wing," he says. "Of course it is right-wing, in the sense that the facts of life are generally right-wing. The very act of forcing yourself to go for a run, every morning, is a highly conservative business. There is the mental effort needed to overcome your laziness.

If only all international conflicts were like this. Sadly, Monk is rather Frenchy in this regard.


(Source: Joel Garreau for The Washington Post)

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Whatever the full explanation for America’s stature deficit, our relative shortness, like our low life expectancy, suggests that something is amiss with our way of life. A critical European might say that America is a land of harried parents and neglected children, of expensive health care that misses those who need it most, a society that for all its wealth somehow manages to be nasty, brutish — and short.

-- Paul Krugman for The New York Times

Americans have become shorter than Europeans, even if you just count the rich white guys? Here is a fascinating little piece, suggesting that something is fundamentally amiss in the Land of the Free. Having more money isn't everything I guess; it also depends on how you spend it.

( Krugman column )

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An Italian court announced this month that it is moving forward with the indictment and trial of 25 CIA agents charged with kidnapping a radical Muslim cleric. These proceedings may well violate international law, but the case serves as a wake-up call to the United States. Overseas opponents of American foreign policy are increasingly turning to judicial proceedings against individual American officials as a means of reformulating or frustrating U.S. aims, and action to arrest this development is needed.

-- David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey for The Washington Post

Rivkin and Casey take on the issue of European judicial indictments and prosecutions of American officials, arguing that the United States may need to respond in kind to such political demonstrations:

Accordingly, Congress should make it a crime to initiate or maintain a prosecution against American officials if the proceeding itself otherwise violates accepted international legal norms. Thus, in instances where there is a clear case of immunity, U.S. prosecutors could answer proceedings such as the Italian indictments with criminal proceedings in U.S. courts. By responding in kind, even if few overreaching foreign officials are ever actually tried, such a law would create a powerful disincentive for these kinds of legal antics.

I was a bit confused about these European judicial moves as well as the CIA operations provoking these legal moves. Rivkin and Lee make the reassuring arguement that there was a legal basis for these CIA renditions of suspected terrorists:

Yet the United States must still vigorously resist the prosecution of its indicted agents. If they acted with the knowledge and consent of the Italian government (as The Post's Dana Priest reported in 2005), they are immune from criminal prosecution in that country.

... The initiation of judicial proceedings against individual Americans is too attractive a means of striking at the United States -- and one often not subject to control by the relevant foreign government.

They really need to restrain their anti-Americanism and keep it legal. They would be more helpful focusing their energies on, say, terrorists, instead of fretting over their penis envy.

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Clifford May gives us a nice accounting of tensions at the Munich Conference on Security Policy and tying it to Munich's darker history, when Western democracy did not stand well against the anti-Democratic forces of the day. I gather this was the conference where Russia trumpeted its anti-American note, but it was also where Iran proudly spread its wings - with the Americans left bristling amid the other smug Western representatives.

( May column )