The Patriot Post® · In Brief: America Is Turning Into the EU
Columnist Joel Kotkin observes how the Democrat Party is looking more like a party of European Union elites than it is American.
Europe may be fading from global relevance, but its influence is expanding within the US Democratic Party. Today, the party’s core beliefs echo those espoused by the European Union and much of the British establishment — an embrace of censorship, a draconian approach to climate change, support for trans ideology, the championing of race-based politics and, increasingly, hostility towards Israel and Jews.
With the seamless elevation of Kamala Harris and her ‘white dude’ vice-president pick, Minnesota governor Tim Walz, the Democratic Party has also embraced the undemocratic methods of the European Commission. The party has turned into a tightly controlled, elite-driven cabal. All this, of course, is justified by Democrats as a way to ‘defend democracy’ against the Trumpian hordes.
Kotkin notes that the Democrat Party of today is almost totally dominated by wealthy West Coast elites, which is a dramatic change from its past.
In the not-so-recent past, the Democrats were also a national and sociologically diverse party. It included Catholics, southerners, labour unions, black and Hispanic politicians and oddball entrepreneurs not aligned with the country-club GOP. It was, as humourist Will Rogers pointed out, famously inwardly conflicted. ‘I do not belong to any organised political party’, the Oklahoma native joked, ‘I’m a Democrat’.
Today, Rogers’s chaotic party has achieved a discipline of almost Stalinist proportions. Rather than allow a battle for the presidency, the party rallied around Harris, who has never won a presidential primary. With a speed that would have astounded George Orwell, the Democrats’ media minions took a candidate widely seen as lacklustre and elevated her to mythic status.
The American Left looks longingly at Europe as the model for American progressivism. Indeed, this is not a new sentiment.
The move to ape European politics reprises themes seen earlier in US history. In the 19th century, American Europhiles included the northern Federalists, who considered leaving the Union during the War of 1812. Some were drawn to the notion of allying with America’s then enemies, the Brits. At the same time, many southern aristocrats yearned to recreate Europe’s class hierarchies in the New World.
Nonetheless, the appeal of European models continued to captivate the upper classes. As historian Fred Siegel points out, Wilson-era progressives derived much of their inspiration from German models of education, scientific inquiry and political order. Later, although a small group embraced fascism, the longer-lasting Europeanist obsession was with the Soviet Union, which could count on widespread admiration well into the 1950s.
The problem is that the losers in this Europhilic vision are everyday, middle-class Americans.