The GOP’s ‘Europe’ is a land of make-believe

The GOP’s ‘Europe’ is a land of make-believe

By Martin Klingst, Published: February 3 | Updated: Saturday, February 4, 5:31 PM

Lately it seems that not a day goes by without a Republican presidential candidate portraying Europe as a socialist nightmare. Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum paint a picture of the Old World as unfree, strangulated by bureaucratic and inefficient welfare systems, and unable to reform and modernize. To these Republicans, Europe seems to be the antipode to everything America is meant to be.

I understand that stump speeches are coarse and that, to Republican candidates, Europe must be bad because President Obama occasionally praises some of its achievements, such as universal health care or the “green” revolution.


But when Romney, Gingrich and Santorum warn about “socialist Europe,” they sound as though they are talking about the Soviet empire, which vanished long ago. Europe is the European Union, a modern entity of 27 democratic countries that, despite many commonalities, greatly differ in history, culture, language, sociology and politics. Europe is difficult to comprehend, but viewing it through a single lens is like calling the United States a Third World nation because there are very poor areas in the South where some people live in shacks or have little access to health care or where some schools are corridors of shame.
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Romney pointed out in New Hampshire last month that, despite the economic downturn, the average U.S. worker still takes home a bigger monthly paycheck than the average European (and even the average German, who makes more than, say, Romanians). That’s true, but the comparison doesn’t take into account the much greater wealth gap in the United States nor the fact that Americans have to spend larger portions of their income on medical care and education.
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A college education is still free in most Old World countries and produces generally better results than in the United States. The Program for International Student Assessment study by the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, released in December, shows that high school students in a number of E.U. countries scored better in reading, math and science than their U.S. counterparts. Another OECD report shows that it is much easier for Germans, Swedes, Danes, Norwegians and Spaniards to climb the socioeconomic ladder than Americans. That’s a stark reversal from the time when greater social mobility was a main reason so many Europeans flocked to the land of opportunity.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-gops-europe-is-a-land-of-make-believe/2012/02/01/gIQA46m1nQ_story.html