Pundits speak of a cultural gulf that’s opening between the US and Europe, as though the two erstwhile allies were only now growing apart. In truth, Europe (including Britain) and America have been fundamental opposites from America’s beginning.
America was a reaction against tyranny, against the individual dominated by and subordinated to the state, the king, the over-arching bureaucracy. Fundamentally, it still is, while Europe mires ever further into a system under which no aspect of citizens lives is untouched by the government. Europe today, in terms of it’s citizens freedom from intrusion by bureaucracy in their everyday lives, is perhaps worse than in the days of feudal lords.
Fundamentally, America stands for the individual, Europe stands for the collective.
This polar difference, ignored, camouflaged, and mis-construed for centuries, is now being brought into sharp relief by world events that necessitate these societies to act, and in so doing to reveal the reasons for their actions. On the one hand, though hesitatingly and with much self-doubt, America is acting to protect the interests of her citizens, based on the founding principles of the nation: the sanctity of individual liberty. Europe, having tied her existence to the Marxist tenet that all live for all, and having given up the power to act militarily, necessarily holds diplomacy as the only way.
Until the early twentieth century, America’s “experiment” in freedom, though in its success a cause for rueful concern, was not pivotal to European foreign policy. Indeed, Europe was not yet Europe, but rather a collection of waning colonial superpowers and their vassals squabbling over turf. When that squabble erupted into WWI, the precedent of a now powerful America intervening in Europe, in effect saving Europe from itself, would be set. America would become the ally of Europe, or, better stated, the ally of the ideological foundation of what Europe would become half a century later. That this Europe was none the less based on ideas grossly divergent from American ideals, would continue to remain “sub-conscious”, while the two friends joined hands to face a common enemy. But as friends sometimes do, Europe and America would one day discover their deep-seated differences.
Post-WWII, as America first rebuilt, and then protected the fledgling Unified Europe, the ideological gulf was never too far below the surface. Differences in how to conduct the Cold War arose, and periodic anti-America protests showed that both European governments and their citizens knew America was different. Ultimately though, they could only grumble in the manner of a resentful poorer cousin, having neither the ability to change America’s fundamental outlook (freedom is good, collectivism is bad), nor the strength to defend themselves against the Russian menace without her.
Now, with backs nudging closer to the proverbial wall, true colors are beginning to show. America is ready and willing to fight, as those with a strong sense-of-self and moral confidence will, while Europe, self-doubting and mired in "otherism", can muster only appeasement, with neither the will or means to defend herself, nor the self-assuredness to ally with those "selfish" Americans.
