Posted on 07/05/2002 12:08:38 PM PDT by Joe Bonforte
I forget who it was who said, "What's the difference between Dominion Day and the Fourth of July? About 48 hours." President Reagan, addressing Parliament in 1987, attributed it to "a Canadian writer" and endorsed its sentiment -- that the dates may be different but the values we celebrate are the same. Tom Ridge, America's Director of Homeland Security, said as much the other day. If it were ever true, it isn't now. You only have to listen to a couple of minutes of any CBC or BBC current affairs show or glance at the front pages of any Continental newspaper to realize that America is the Western world's odd man out, and has been increasingly since September 11th.
And I couldn't be happier about it. I'm delighted the United States is not like Belgium or even New Zealand, and Belgians and New Zealanders should be grateful, too, if they think about it for a minute. Had the U.S. elected Helmut Schmidt or Pierre Trudeau, you can pretty much guess how the Cold War would have turned out. The same stakes are at play now. So I would urge Americans, as they celebrate this Independence Day, to celebrate also their independence -- not just from George III but from the rest of what passes for the civilized world.
There are many examples of American difference, but let's start with the Pledge of Allegiance, which last week was struck down by a Federal court in one of the loopier corners of California as "unconstitutional." By this, they mean that the words "under God" violates the separation of church and state. Whether or not a nation should have a Pledge of Allegiance and whether or not that pledge should include the words "under God" are certainly open to discussion. But they're nothing to do with the Establishment Clause of the Constitution, whose meaning to anyone apart from mischievous atheists and history-disdaining dopes is perfectly clear.
The founders of the American republic were a canny bunch: they kept most of their constitutional inheritance from Britain, but with a significant exception. They did not want President Washington to be also Supreme Governor of the Church of America, as today the Queen of England is also Supreme Governor of the Church of England. They did not want an Archbishop of Virginia sitting in the Senate and legislating on the people's affairs, as today the Archbishop of Canterbury and the other Anglican bishops sit in the House of Lords and make laws for British Catholics, Muslims and atheists. They did not want a Federal government appointing the Bishop of Des Moines, as today Tony Blair appoints the bishops of the Church of England. They did not want an American to be disqualified from becoming head of state because of religion, in the way that 20 years ago Prince Michael of Kent was obliged to renounce his right of succession to the throne of Britain (and Canada: an "established church" has a long reach) because he wished to marry a Catholic.
The founders were men of God: they just didn't think the government should be in the business of approving and licensing one particular denomination over all others. Their view prevailed so successfully that two centuries on the very idea seems so nutty and incredible to Americans that Establishment Clause fetishists have nothing to do but sit around plotting how to get the Third Grade Christmas concert to ban Frosty The Snowman. If the Pledge of Allegiance is unconstitutional for including the words "under God," then so is the city where the court sat in judgment -- San Francisco: How can you have a government jurisdiction named after a saint? Surely one's property tax bill is thus equally unconstitutional?
No doubt some exhibitionist poltroon in the Bay Area is ready and willing to make that case. The rest of us might more usefully look at the broader impact of disestablishment. Today the United States is the last religious country in the western world, the last in which a majority of the population are practising believers. By contrast, in all the jurisdictions where one church was formally or informally tied to the state -- England, Ireland, France, Spain, Quebec, you name it -- religious observance has withered away to statistically insignificant numbers.
"When men cease to believe in God," said G. K. Chesterton, "they do not believe in nothing; they believe in anything!" The anything most of the Western world's non-believers believe in is government: the age of church-and-state has been superseded by the era of state-as-church. In Europe, they're happy to have cast off the supposed stultifying oppressiveness of religion for a world in which the EU regulates every aspect of life from "xenophobia" to the curvature of bananas. The fact that the most religious nation in the West is also the most powerful militarily, economically and culturally may be sheerest coincidence, so let's just say that separating church from state wound up strengthening the vitality of religion in America.
That's what makes the Establishment Clause an early declaration of the self-restraint of U.S. government. After all, if the government gets to pick the bishops, it's a safe bet they'll get to pick everyone else, too -- as Mr. Blair does, and M. Chrétien, too. Out in Alberta at last week's G8 summit, there was a striking difference between Mr. Bush and his chums as they batted around how many gazillions of dollars to lavish on Africa: if Chrétien or Schroeder or Chirac says X billion, X billion it is; but President Bush can only give what Congress approves. Kofi Annan, having endured eight years of meaningless promises from Bill Clinton at these international gabfests, went so far as to express his impatience at the way these rip-roaring schemes by the global elite wind up getting stalled because of the votes of obscure Senators from Missouri and North Dakota. M. Chrétien is so exquisitely imperial a Prime Minister he thought nothing of tying explicitly the money earmarked for Africa to his own continuation in office, but, alas for the convenience of Secretary-General Annan, America is not a one-man state.
That's where the EU, in their haste to line up at the Eurinals and spray their contempt over Bush, are missing the point. Who is this arrogant cowboy, they sneer, to tell the Palestinians whom they can vote for. Actually, that's not what Bush said. The guys who tell people who they can vote for are the Europeans. Only a couple weeks back, Tony Blair and Gerhard Schroeder told the French to vote for Chirac. In February, the Belgian Foreign Minister threatened sanctions against Italy if they voted for Umberto Bossi's Northern League. When Austria proved less pliable and admitted duly elected members of Joerg Haider's Freedom Party to the coalition government, the EU did, indeed, impose sanctions.
But to suggest to Palestinians that things might go better if they elected a non-terrorist leadership is apparently unacceptable. Arafat has far more blood on his hand than Bossi, Haider, Jean-Marie Le Pen and Joerg Haider put together and multiplied a thousandfold, but he's the West's guy: they can talk to him, strongman to strongman, Jacques to Yasser. Suddenly Bush comes along and says not that he wants a non-Yasser President but that he'd like a new constitution, separation of powers, an autonomous legislature, independent municipal institutions. Where does that sound like? Britain, where Tony Blair can simply replace one house of the legislature with another more to his liking? Canada, where municipalities are abolished by order of the Ontario and Quebec governments? No, it sounds like he wants a U.S. Constitution for Palestine, where President Yasser Clinton and Vice-President Mohammed al-Gore get hamstrung by Senator Ahmed Helms and Senator Walid Thurmond, and, either way, it makes no difference to the residents of high-tax Ramallah or no-tax Jenin. Is Bush just winding up the Kofi set? Hard to say. But you can understand why the EU recoils from such a vision: If separation of powers were to catch on in Palestine, who's to say it mightn't spread to the Continent?
There's a famous Fleet Street headline often cited as an example of British isolationism: "Fog In Channel, Continent Cut Off." But the odd man out isn't necessarily the guy in the wrong. On matters such as the role of the state, concentration of power, and the usefulness of international institutions, I'll bet on the Americans: There's a fog in the Atlantic, but it's Europe that's cut off.
© Copyright 2002 National Post
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