Your take on the Sanes insight in email #294

Submitted by J. Keen Holland (United States), Jan 29, 2003 at 14:34

While I agree that the three systems model proposed by Sanes is an interesting approach which sheds some additional light on the Europe problem, I believe both you and he are missing something important.
While there is a sort of American system which can be defined in terms of what used to be a consensus view of historical American political and social values, there is not a coherent international power pushing that system on the world (unless you think that is what the IMF has been up to lately).

The Islamist critique is an international intellectual phenomenon and there are numerous international organizations (Arab League, Islamic Council, OAPEC, various terror organizations and "charities," etc.) through which it exerts considerable influence.

The European system is merely an elaboration of the old Socialist International dressed up in "Third Way" clothes. It controls many European governments and dominates the EU's world view.

My point is that, in terms of organization, the American system hardly registers compared to the various forms of collectivism extant in the world and that it is rapidly disappearing here at home. The days of Hubert Humphrey and Henry Jackson are gone. The Democrats in the US are now indistinguishable from their SI cohorts in Europe and the Republicans are chiefly differentiated from the Democrats by a leadership that pays lip-service to a few social issues dear to the rank and file while haggling with Democrats over the speed with which we approach the precipice of economic disaster.

It seems to me that what we have is a gaggle of variations on socialism, each more or less organized and with a multinational constituency, and then we have an America which is scorned by all because we don't seem to be abandoning the "permanent things" with sufficient alacrity.

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