Becoming Europe: Economic Decline, Culture, and How America Can Avoid a European Future

摘要

If America were like western Europe, subscribers to the Independent Review might be advised to request that it be discreetly delivered to their post office boxes in a brown-paper wrapper. The ideas that Review subscribers cherish-economic freedom, small government, individual responsibility-are increasingly anathema in Europe. As Samuel Gregg explains it, the language and ideals of "solidarity" and "social justice" so permeate public discourse in Europe that "even minor attempts to reform its social welfare programs, let alone reduce the welfare state's size, are regarded by many Europeans as a heartless assault on the weak and marginalized, and a betrayal of the commitments widely associated with Social Europe" (p. 12).