Europe

Instapundit notes a Brussels’ Journal article on Vaclav Klaus. who it contends made “‘[t]he most impressive speech during the recent Regional Meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society. He begins “View from a Post-Communist Country in a Predominantly Post-Democratic Europe” with Hayek’s description of the intellectuals’ role in shaping society.

They, therefore, look for ideas with specific characteristics. They look for ideas, which enhance the role of the state because the state is usually their main employer, sponsor or donator. That is not all. According to Hayek “the power of ideas grows in proportion to their generality, abstractness, and even vagueness”. Hence it is not surprising that the intellectuals are mostly interested in abstract, not directly implementable ideas. This is also the way of thinking, in which they have comparative advantage. They are not good at details. They do not have ambitions to solve a problem. They are not interested in dealing with the everyday’s affairs of common citizens. Hayek put it clearly: “the intellectual, by his whole disposition, is uninterested in technical details or practical difficulties.” He is interested in visions and utopias and because “socialist thought owes its appeal largely to its visionary character” (and I would add lack of realism and utopian nature), the intellectual tends to become a socialist.

Czech intellectualism is often countered by Czech pragmatism. And here is Klaus’s optimistic belief that the EU setback may be a chance to to “open the door” to reflections on “what makes our society free, democratic and prosperous.” He concludes with succinct descriptions of political, economic and social systems that are indeed free. These values should also govern relations with other countries. And, underlying all should be “a system of ideas, which will be based on freedom, personal responsibility, individualism, natural caring for others and genuine moral conduct of life.”

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“Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder,” the historian Arnold Toynbee wrote, and these words could certainly be Ms. Fallaci’s.” (Tunku Varadarajan)

Arts & Letters links to the WSJ interview of Fallaci:

The impending Fall of the West, as she sees it, now torments Ms. Fallaci. And as much as that Fall, what torments her is the blithe way in which the West is marching toward its precipice of choice.

But she sees hope in a place surprising for a journalist if not for (traditionally) an Italian: “I feel less alone when I read the books of Ratzinger.” She is especially moved by “If Europe Hates Itself.”

I had asked Ms. Fallaci whether there was any contemporary leader she admired, and Pope Benedict XVI was evidently a man in whom she reposed some trust. “I am an atheist, and if an atheist and a pope think the same things, there must be something true. It’s that simple! There must be some human truth here that is beyond religion.”

Religion & history intertwine in our desire to understand ourselves. She notes: “Look at the school system of the West today. Students do not know history!” And, reading this, I remember a short while ago a friend scoffed at Texas’ “jingoism” in requiring two semesters of American history survey (with some majors a course in Texas history can be substituted) and one in state & another in federal government. Jingoism is one word for it, perhaps. Respect. A certain humility that we can learn from the past. There is all that. Simply, I argued, how can we know who we are if we don’t know from what we came?

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Remarks from someone who has been there & done that:

Seemingly unshakable totalitarian monoliths are in fact sometimes as cohesive as proverbial houses of cards, and fall just as quickly. Continuing democratization of the whole region, together with growing dissent inside the country, must eventually have a positive effect. As Aung San Suu Kyi celebrates her 60th birthday, I wish for her that those changes will happen as soon as possible, and that my silly idea — to hand her a rose — becomes a simple and easy thing to do.

I’m not sure just who this reinforces among the threads today, but it does give witness: totalitarian monoliths aren’t all that strong in important ways and a bloodless revolution from within can happen – it just doesn’t very often.

He also returns to Cuba, not allowing the folly he battled to slip away without mention; the EU

recently learned the hard way when it thought — partly out of naivete, partly out of expediency — that a more forthcoming attitude toward Fidel Castro’s regime would lead to a more forthcoming attitude on the part of Castro toward his political prisoners and dissent in general. But Castro made a fool of the E.U.

My posts below, as well as Shannon’s have gotten a lot of comments. I had meant to respond today, but I’d rather digest all those thoughtful comments for one more day. I also promised some posts on the Euro, which I also hope to be able to post tomorrow.

For now just this: I see from some of said comments that people have gotten the wrong idea about me. I actually value individual freedom and free markets as much anyone, but unfortunately we are not living in a perfect world where such things can be taken for granted, as some may have noticed. Like it or not, we need some institutions to at least achieve a reasonable (or even an unreasonable) approximation of same.

So, to rank the possible institutional arrangements in order of desirability:

1) In a perfect world, none at all. There didn’t need to be any EU, or WTO for that matter, for countries would have rational policies, without any obstacles to trade. Individuals and businesses would be unhindered in the free and voluntary exchange of goods and services (even so I would frown rather fiercely on the free and voluntary exchange of, say, money and arms between Germany and China; then again, in a perfect world the Chinese would only want to buy our weapons systems because they like their aesthetically pleasing looks, and wasn’t it Roger Bacon who said that this here *is* the best of all possible worlds, so… – but I digress).

2) Given a non-perfect world (leaving Roger Bacon and sales of weapons to China aside and under the table, respectively), where barriers to trade exist, both in the form of tariffs and the bureaucratic intransigence Jim Bennett was hinting at in his comment to Shannon’s post, some kind of institution is necessary to facilitate free trade in Europe. The institution I have in mind would be very different from the EU existing now, though. In this I am following the lead of James A. Buchanan, one of the Chicagoboyz above (he’s the sixth from the left), who received the Nobel Price in economics for his Public Choice theory. Buchanan and Viktor Vanberg, one of my professors at the University of Freiburg im Breisgau, had co-authored a paper (memory fails me as to title and publication date of the paper, but I think it is ‘Rational Choice and Moral Order’ from 1988), in which they laid out their idea for a European Union that would offer the most individual freedom and the best prospect for growth, given the constraints imposed on both by the world we live in.

In the European Union proposed by the two authors, each member nation would set all its policies concerning taxation, regulation etc, etc, independently from all others. The two guiding principles of the Union would be ‘voice’ and ‘exit’. This means that the citizens of each nation would have a say over all of these policies (voice), and that those who didn’t like the policies in the nation they are living in could relocate themselves as well as their possessions to the member state of their choice, without any bureaucratic hindrances, taxation and levies on their property etc, etc (exit). The only purpose of the European Commision would be to make sure that the two principles are observed by the various national governments.

The advantages this arrangement would offer are obvious: It is altogether democratic, while having the policies of the individual member states compete with each other. Nations would be free to put foolish policies into place, but would suffer the consequences immediately by seeing the most wealthy and industrious citizens leave for more accommodating environments. Over time this competition would weed out the most damaging political ideas. We see some of this in the real world, due to globalization, but it is a much slower process that also allows people to ignore problems for a long time, for they can live of the economic substance and wealth of their nation instead of actual income for decades, thus risking slow but inevitable collapse.

Unfortunately this system proposed by Buchanan and Vanberg is all but impossible, for Continental policies are traditionally extremely dirigiste, and our electorates would never tolerate this much freedom anyway. In fact, right now especially German and French voters would like nothing better than to sit on their behinds, live of the wealth created in the past, and to complain about the unfairness of the world all the way down.

This brings us to

3) the European Union that we have have, as the third-best solution I mentioned in the title of this post. For all of its warts, halitosis, running sores and so on and on, it still is the best that we can do right now. Its policies are horribly dirigiste and socialistic, but not nearly as dirigiste and socialistic as the policies the individual members would have if they were free to formulate them in any way they wanted to.

So, free trade among the members of the EU enforced by Brussels and common laws is the best we can hope for right now. Besides, while the various interest groups, trade unions, farmers’ associations and so on are united in their avarice, authoritarian leanings and general pigheadedness, the interests of the national subgroup of each diverge from that of the other subgroups. For the cake they want to carve slices from now is a Pan-European one, and the only way they can increase their own share is to go after that of their counterparts’ in other countries. Thus they keep each other in check, and the whole affair is as entertaining as a cage fight.

And to address this particular concern, too: There also is no danger of a European super-state. The centrifugal forces (so to speak) are too strong for integration beyond a certain point, and the attempt to proceed further anyway would rip the EU apart.

And for completeness sake there is

4) the EU dissolving, and the individual members again free to pursue the protectionist and even more socialist policies described above. The way least favored by myself.

In a nutshell, I’m no fan of the EU in its current form, but it is the least bad solution I can think of, given the current political climate and real-world constraints.

See, for example, this column (via Jim Bennett).

(Previous discussion on this topic here.)