Obama’s America looks a lot like the EU

The Washington Times ^ | 29 January 2012 | Victor Davis Hanson

[COBOL2Java]

Almost a decade ago, Europeans and many progressive Americans were lamenting how the United States was going to miss out on the 21st-century paradigm symbolized by the robust European Union. Neanderthal Americans were importing ever more oil while waging a costly “war on terror” and fighting conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Our budget deficit in 2003 hit $374 billion.

The European Union avoided foreign conflicts and embraced soft power. Its declining military budgets and centralized transnational government ensured that it could address climate change and fund ever-expanding entitlements. Even the poorer Mediterranean nations reached new heights of prosperity. The Greek economy soared. Spain’s real estate market was to become the hottest in the world. Italy seemed to resemble Germany more than Portugal.

President George W. Bush was not just hated in Europe, but caricatured as the symbol of backward, free-market capitalism, rank American consumerism and U.S. imperialism abroad. Only with the election of the progressive Barack Obama would Europe finally find a like-minded, sophisticated American president.

Yet European Union prosperity has now proved a phantom — one conjured up by accounting gimmickry, borrowed German money and corrupt EU apparatchiks. Neither the European Union at large nor most individual European nations can sustain their present rate of redistributionist entitlements. To end cash transfers across borders spells the breakup of the union. To embrace austerity at home ensures near-anarchy in the streets of individual nations.

[Mastador1]

“The European Union avoided foreign conflicts and embraced soft power. Its declining military budgets.” They could only do this by depending on and forcing America to keep them safe. Europe mocked the U.S. for it’s military spending but could only throw billions into their socialist society because America kept them safe.

Now once again the liberals in America want to drag us into the same proven folly and quagmire that Europe itself has come to recognize is self destructive. Liberal Americans always on the wrong side of the curve, the military and the American way of life.

[Jack Hydrazine]

America’s begginning to look a lot like Europe!
(That reminds me of a tune I’ve heard.)

[relictele]