Among the EU-niks

Yesterday French "human rights" groups said they had received assurances from Paris's justice minister that she would limit her cooperation with the investigation of suspected terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui because America is seeking the death penalty in his case. And indeed, hardly a day goes by without a fresh European derision of the simplistic Americans and their war against terrorism.

The divide is easily identified: Who would you rather have run your nation, white-collar elites or blue-collar voters? The faculty of Yale or the firemen you saw on CBS's "9/11" special last week?

Most European societies would pick the Yale faculty, for they believe in the wisdom and judgment of white-collar intellectuals, and for more than a century they have built their governments around the elitist, socialist model Germany introduced in the 1890s.

Most Americans would pick the firemen, for we are wary of the Ph.D./good-government elites, and since 1776 we have placed our faith in the judgment of voters.

That's a very asute comment, though there's much irony in that it comes from an American with much more in common with Europe's grande bourgeoisie than the rest of us.

But Europeans have never had a choice in the matter. This was a topic of some discussion in recent months. On issues like gun control, and the death penalty, ordinary Europeans haven't had much say.

American society was very influenced by the frontier, by pietism, and by the development of a very distinctive kind of machine politics in the cities. The absence of an aristocracy and the primacy of business and practicality over intellectualism and theory also contributed to giving American society a particularly democratic stamp.

In Europe there has always been some deference to authorities. And it's been passed on from kings, aristocrats and royal courts to bourgeois professionals and academics to parties and bureaucrats, without an Andrew Jackson to overturn hierarchies.

Du Pont's mention of the German Socialists of the 1890s is interesting and there may be something to it. Those socialists developed a very different European style of machine politics, defined by strong party cohesion and deference to party elites. This dovetailed very nicely with the parliamentary system to increase the power of party leaders and prevent challenges to their power.

But I don't quite think those German Socialists are responsible for what happened. They were not even a ruling party until some time later. And the pattern of European politics had already been set by the time they came on the scene.

There was a much older tradition of arrogant ruling classes and submissive populations. The bourgeoisie stepped into the shoes of the aristocracy over the last two centuries, and Socialist parties stepped into those same shoes over the last 70 years.

Europe does provide a corrective to some of our excesses. If we have more sail, they have more ballast. But more and more they do look like they have somehow been rendered tame and docile and subservient to governments that feel little need to ask their advice on important matters.

The French will say that they still have energy, dynamism and independence, but seen through American eyes, they look pretty feeble indeed.

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