American dream or European nightmare?

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One of the latest phrases to enter the political lexicon is “a teaching moment.” When a white cop arrested an unruly black college professor a while back, President Obama told us it was such a moment. I’m not sure what the lesson was, but whatever it was, the President taught it to us in the Rose Garden over a glass of beer.

What I find strange is our failure to find “a teaching moment” in the near collapse of Europe after decades of reckless spending on social welfare programs. No one here seems to look at Europe’s anemic economies and conclude that we should avoid its mistakes. Instead our intellectual and political elite continue to cast envious eyes across the ocean and pray that someday we may be as sophisticated as the Europeans.

In many European countries everyone is more or less taken care of from nursery to nursing home to crematorium. Health care, job security, vacations, pensions—all guaranteed by the government. Unfortunately, those benefits, which we were told are needed here, and which President Obama has gone a long way toward imposing on this nation, are the root cause of the near collapse of Greece, Italy, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, and other EU members. Drowning in debt, Europe is frantically adopting drastic austerity programs.

The New York Times recently did a piece on the “cozy” treatment of many occupations in Greece. Pharmacists, street vendors, truck drivers, and even lawyers, among others, have protected jobs or are guaranteed a certain percentage of profits on their goods or services. Pharmacists, for example, get a 35 percent profit on the drugs they sell. Everybody retires at 60 and many before. Pandering to unions and pressure groups is out of control. It costs more to truck goods 45 miles away in Greece than it does to haul them to Germany.

I recently heard the tale of a German immigrant who wanted to start his own carpentry business in his native country, but ended up coming to America so he could go to work immediately. Back home there were so many bureaucrats to talk to and so many licenses to apply for and so many fees to pay that he just gave up and came to America. He is prospering.

In France it is proposed that all citizens not only have a right to lengthy vacations but also an inalienable right to travel. God forbid that anyone be required to stay home because of budget considerations. (Oops, I forgot, God is not allowed to forbid anything in France).

To be sure, we Americans, for all our individualism, welcome a helping hand from government in hard times, but that is a far cry from having the government on your back. Take too many handouts and that’s where the government ends up sitting—on your back. Too often it is forgotten that government should only do those things that individuals cannot do for themselves.

The fact is that only now are European leaders realizing that they cannot give people their hearts’ desires, because there is no end to what people demand when someone else is paying for it. Thus do we find England, France, Greece, and other European nations attempting to tighten their belts in a wave of new austerity programs.

And the darned citizens are not co-operating. Truckers in Greece tie up the borders in protest against plans to terminate their “cozy” privileges. Spaniards riot and loot. Frenchmen march against proposals to raise the retirement age above 60. (Isn’t ours on the way to 67?). The Brits are studying ways to cut back on their sickly government health care program.

It’s near impossible to take away something that the people have learned to depend on. The very thought sends chills up your spine. That’s why American politicians accuse each other of conspiring to “take away your Social Security.” There’s nothing like fear mongering to sway votes.

In a few weeks it looks like the GOP is going to send the Democrat spenders in Congress packing, and then the Republicans will get their hands on the purse strings. Judging from past performance, after an initial bout of thriftiness, our new leaders will follow the same path as the scoundrels they ousted. God forbid.

But I am an eternal optimist. Maybe we will elect people who believe again in American exceptionalism—that we really are different. That what we have in America is special. We were not handed wealth and privilege. Our parents and grandparents created a nation where people were given something better. It’s called opportunity. That’s why our ancestors got out of Europe and came here in the first place.The American Dream has always been that through education and hard work we can enjoy a better life for ourselves and our children.

You do it yourself. You don’t wait for the government to do it for you.

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Stan Latreille is a novelist, blogger, lawyer, former newspaperman, and a retired Circuit Court judge. He is the author of "Perjury" and is working on a new novel, tentatively titled "Absolution."