Lessons For the European Union

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Old Europe is long accustomed to instructing Americans in matters of deeper significance, so they have a little trouble acknowledging that the present formation of the European Union is based on the American design, in Philadelphia, of 1787 and perhaps will encounter some of the same problems. The success of that design is the main motive for imitating it, the difficulties Europeans seek to overcome are the same ones we faced, and the difficulties the Europeans will discover in the future after they do it, will be much the same ones we discovered. They can take it or leave it, but here are a few observations.

The Declaration of Independence

The people in power in the individual nations of Europe, and the political factions which elected them, don't really want to give up their power to a central government in Strasbourg. Exactly the same reluctance inspired our thirteen colonies in the Eighteenth Century. Having multiple sovereign governments, however, soon proves inefficient, costly, and dangerous if you have powerful enemies. Free trade and a common currency seem like good things, but there are plenty of people who will resist them because they currently benefit from tariffs, subsidies, protectionism, even blatant favoritism, and don't want to change the rules in the middle of the game. Furthermore, if transitions are too rapid, even from a bad system to a good one, changes can prove extremely disruptive. The Europeans have a big problem we didn't have, of multiple languages, so harmony will be slower to arrive -- try to imagine a common market union in the Balkans.

" But our experience teaches an important principle, unwritten in the Constitution. The outstanding message of the American experience from 1787 to 1850, quite unforeseen by the Founding Fathers, is that no party in power can see the merit of self-restraint until it has spent some time out of power. Nor can any party of complainers and reformers see the true merit of stability and caution until it has spend some time in power, itself. Let's suggest a rule to the Europeans: every political faction is untrustworthy until it has spent two terms in office, and then two terms out of office.

Maybe even that assessment is too generous; after all, in 1850 we were just getting ready to have our Civil War. You'd certainly hate to think it was essential to have one of them.

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