Daniel Hannan -- A Letter of Warning to America

welcome to uncommon knowledge I'm Peter Robinson a journalist and author Daniel Hannan has since 1999 correct me if I make a mistake here been a British member of the European Parliament he first came to wide notice here in the United States when he made a speech on the floor of the European Parliament addressing the then Prime Minister of Great Britain Gordon Brown I'll quote you or you you probably had this all but memorized you cannot spend your way out of recession he said to the Prime Minister and when you repeat in that wooden and perfunctory way that we are well placed to weather the storm I have to tell you you sound like a bration of era apparatchik giving the party line mr. Hannen has just published a new book the new road to serfdom a letter of warning to America Daniel Hannan welcome thank you segment 1 what makes America different when you were 18 you write in this book you and some friends took a trip to the United States let me quote you we kept finding the same character traits and thues e azzam artlessness impatience optimism only much later did it occur to me that these are not innate characteristics explained well very often when you talk about what makes American politics different people on both sides of the Atlantic will say well it's its culture you know Americans have their undifferentiated that Europe hasn't on but that answer doesn't really take you very far I mean culture isn't some numinous entity that exists alongside institutions it's a product of institutions there are reasons why there is a tea party here and there isn't a tea party in Europe and if you break it down why is the what's happening in the u.s. is different it's the single biggest factor actually is open primaries there's a tea party here because people think that there's a purpose to it might consider using by open primaries in most of Europe in most of the Democratic world in fact everywhere really other than the US candidates are chosen by their parties and are then presented to the electorate which means in effect that they're chosen by the party leader and his clique and this allows the political parties to exclude big mainstream currents of public opinion from the legislature now all of the evidence I have is that people in Britain and people in Europe dislike the level of Taxation just as much as Americans do in fact they've got a lot more to complain about in terms of the overall level of tax so the reason there is a tea party here is not because of some perverse American characteristic of being anti-tax it's that people think that they can do something about it through the ballot box and that is an incredibly precious thing you have very few of my American friends realize how unusual it is how unique you are and how blessed you are in having this system of being able to select your your own candidates it open primaries referendums initiative procedures recall votes the dispersal of power states rights all of these things are modern incarnations of the old constitutional ideal of the dispersal of power and it's worked it's it done what it was meant to do it's done what the founders intended which is to keep your government small so in this country they're just many more ways in which ordinary citizens can just a small group of ordinary considered citizens can find a place to take a stand and have a voice much harder to do in Europe so the institutions are what impression correct I mean a classic example in my own country being the issue of the European Union the overwhelming majority of my constituents would like to leave the European Union that is not a position publicly shared by any politicians by any big newspaper by any main political party fifty-five percent or even the Telegraph yeah even the Telegraph no no no national newspaper wants to leave the European Union even though all the readers of all but yeah okay now you're making another point in and additional white I think it buttresses your argument but just seemed to me distinct there is no fox news there's no Rush Limbaugh there's no alternative media I have discovered only one website in all of Britain that's affiliated with the Conservatives affiliated loosely with the Tory party that seems to have something of a little bit of a tea flavour one website and how many dozens upon dozens of websites do we have here now why is that well I think there are other websites there are me and that is and that is making a big difference I mean until very recently there was a kind of media cartel and you could kill a story just by not reporting it Spira see but just because you didn't think it was important as it didn't fit with your worldview that is less and less true I'm in the classic recent example being the leak of the University of East Anglia Climategate email a very well there was a telegraph blogger called James Delingpole who carried on harping on and on day after day about this story and he had this great technique which to say this is what the times environment correspondent thinks is the top story today this is what the independent thinks is a top story when are they finally going to cover this and in the end they had to now ten years ago even five years ago that wouldn't have happened and you know there was the disintermediation of the message if you like is I think of great value to free marketeers and conservatives generally because it was it was by and large the soft left who had and still have the control of the old broadcast media but it's also just a good thing for the truth I mean you know it's out of this crashing dinner of competing interpretations that we get the fact I'm struck by how many American liberals you write in the New Road to Serfdom now seem to see their country through European eyes close quote and this is subtitled a letter of warning to America so give me in a sentence or two why that strikes you is perilous oh yeah you meet a lot of these Americans in Europe I suppose understandably you know oh we never voted for Bush oh we're not like like you think you know where terror we wish we had more of what you have you know I come back to you don't appreciate not most of my American friends quite understandably take for granted what's familiar and it's very rare to meet Americans who are appreciative of how extraordinary is the constitutional inheritance of this country how successful the founders were in dispersing and democratizing power and constraining the state by doing that what's happening now it seems to me the direction being pursued by this administration amounts to a comprehensive policy of Europeanisation European health care European welfare European climate targets European disarmament and if you make your country more like the rest of the world less American you will serve to make it less independent less prosperous less free and that's our problem as well as yours the world has benefited from as and engaged in much in today's segment too let's take a few of those topics you mentioned quoting again the economy the New Road to Serfdom quote here is Europe's economic tragedy it suffers no worse than the United States during recessions but it fails to recover to the same extent during the intervening up swings so why not why is there less dynamism in the European economy there has been an enormous amount of legislation well-intentioned legislation aimed at giving social protection to employees and it's now reached the stage in a lot of countries where it just isn't worth your while to hire people because once you've done that you won't be able to get rid of them you become very nervous about taking people on in the good times because you know that you won't be able to get them off your books if things go bad and this has led to a measure of structural unemployment which historically has been much higher than that in the u.s. it's striking that unemployment in this country has just reached European levels at the same time that your government has expanded you've started regulating the private sector telling people how much they're allowed to be paid and so on there's a connection between those two things in the short term you can have the paternity leave the vacations but in the long term the money runs out well okay so look let me try that first couple of decades after the Second World War you look at the statistics in Western Europe in the United States and people work about the same number of hours each year right and then about beginning of the 1970s Europeans begin passing legislation shortening the workweek lengthening vacations and so forth and Americans amazingly enough start working even more hours per year so the figures diverge now the argument would be by the 1970s the Europeans had recovered from the ravages of the Second World War and then some achieving the highest living standard their continent or indeed mankind had ever ever experienced well life is nice in Paris why not stroll down the seans Alizee why not shorten your workweek and take more vacation or in Britain why not have a little more time to fly down to the Costa del Sol that's sane relax enjoy life it's we Americans who are pathologically driven to achieve unthinkingly does make sense that is exactly the argument and what you're missing is what's inside I mean going back to your strutting boulevardier in Paris I mean outwardly he's beautifully turned out with his waistcoat and his silver top cane inside he's rotted with syphilis you know something something has gone badly wrong and it and we're discovering it now you're right during the first couple of decades after the Second World War Europe did indeed bounce back with extraordinary Verve and vigor partly because it was coming back from an artificial though I mean the war had degraded infrastructure but had not wiped out an industrious and educated workforce partly because it was migration for the first time huge movement of people from the Mediterranean to northern Europe and partly which we shouldn't underestimate because they were getting a massive external stimulus in the form of US subsidy the Marshall Plan I'd also add the the Germans under Earhart of the viewed shaft under they embrace free markets they embrace free markets but I mean don't but I want to call what that placed a limit on what to go up good here's the thing you see they they I mean just to sister just to stress the the Marshall eight point we're talking serious money I mean 13 billion dollars between 1948 and 1952 on the table dollars was real money when exactly a billionaire a billionaire plus even more valuable the security guarantee which meant that money that would have otherwise had to go on defense was being freed up for other things now of course human nature being what it is the leaders of Europe round about the 60s and early 70s didn't say well of course we've grown because of the artificial low and because of the American assistance what they said understandably was oh we've grown because we have found this fantastic brilliant model which is kind of between socialism and capitalism the mixed market economy that the tripartite negotiations of government and labor unions and employers and as I say in the short term what's not to like but there comes a point when you realize that you've been funding this on credit that you've been depending on external assistance and that your productivity has fallen further and further behind until you've got to the stage that we've now reached where it takes for Germans to work the same hours as three Americans and that in the long term is just not sustainable Europe now that it's in a globalized economy competing against China and India and indeed North America finds that it is shrinking precipitately in the in the 1970s in 1974 Europe accounted for 36% of Western Europe for 36% of world GDP today it's 25 percent ten years from now it'll be fifteen percent that that is an extraordinary decline over a period when the US share a world GDP has remained pretty steady around about 26 percent so there was always going to be a reckoning and I'm afraid that reckoning has come now health care the new road to serfdom once politicians assume responsibility for health care they find that they have made an almost irreversible emphasis for my purposes on that word irreversible decision why is that irreversible because you are responsible for everybody lying on a trolley in a hospital corridor for want of a bed and anything that goes wrong can be blamed on lack of resources and therefore you find that you're in a situation when nobody I mean it the the last election all three British parties went into the campaign promising substantial reductions in public spending all three of them had to tack on an exemption saying but not health care that budget will continue to grow in perpetuity because politically is impossible I mean how and actually morally it's impossible how can you as it were be responsible for somebody suffering a preventable condition for lack of resources you know unless they are in some way responsible for their own resources it puts you as the the minister in an almost impossible position and I always found it striking that misses that even mrs. Thatcher is the way to put this one even mrs. Thatcher who sold off the council houses and privatized one industry after another and broke the unions in the coal strikes never touched the National Health Service and her Chancellor Nigel Lawson after he retired made a very striking observation as to why he said the National Health Service is the closest thing we have to a religion and the way the voter sees it is you have these Sasser total figures the doctors and the nurses and then you have the this these laymen who call themselves the government and plainly for the layman to tell the priest how to run their affairs or indeed how to reform themselves in any way is intolerable also in don't copy Europe the family again I quote the New Road to Serfdom quote the state has assumed control over functions that were once discharged within families health education daycare provision for the elderly so it is perhaps no surprise that the family itself in Europe is in decline explain that one very few babies mmm demographers say you you have to give me the draw the line from the growth of the welfare state to the the plummeting of the birthrate I mean it's not a simple line the two things are not immediately sequential there are other things going on there's a whole bunch of reasons why the birthrate has been in decline to do with the spread of contraception the women working there's and there's a you know and some of these are very good things and and I don't want to oversimplify it is striking nonetheless that the first generation raised with cradle to grave welfare the first generation to be excused the traditional responsibilities of adulthood was the first one also to give up on Parenthood when the state expands it squeezes out the private sphere there was a time not so very long ago when any adult seeing a child out of school in term time would have said why aren't you in class now that seen as a government's job there was a time not so very long ago when we all had to look out for our elderly neighbors make sure they were collecting their milk every money that is now seen as social services the real problem with the growth of welfarism is not that it retards economic growth although it does I mean of course it makes the economy grow more slowly that's true but in a way that is that is a the least of our problems the real malignancy is the way it phrased the bonds that used to tie society together it makes us less virtuous as individual citizens and it makes us it infantilizes us it makes us less likely to take on our responsibilities what Europeans most disdain in America is cultural conservatism but I can't help noticing that values voters in the United States seem to be keeping up their numbers just as the United States is out breeding Europe so the Republicans are out breeding the Democrats as a happy thought yeah you don't really know that the megachurch is in the Bible Belt offend European tastes but there are plenty of children in their Sunday schools and after the 2010 census figures come down they will pick up that those portions of the country will pick up seeds me yeah but I think that there is a general point about optimism and creating if you like a file Oprah generative society a society where people want to have babies the only European country that is breeding at replacement levels is Albania the only place in Europe where the population would be growing without immigration or at least sustaining itself turkey the sailors you come track is a European country I used to go to Turkey with my kids were babies and I discovered that it is a perfectly normal thing in Turkey for a passing stranger of either sex to grab a baby out of a pram and lift it up in the air and say thanks be to God you know now that doesn't happen in London very often no and I can't help thinking that there is probably a connection but in a in a society where well now so what so what so what's the connection you just named two countries are you're not suggesting that it's because Albania and Turkey have smaller welfare states what they do they have much much smaller welfare states and they have much more important families well and you have also just named the two Muslim connection in Europe they are less secularized so all right so you're making a point about the welfare state or about religion or goals again those two things are not completely separate as the space grows the private sphere shrinks and part of the private sphere is is is that the road of the churches okay segment for America in the world again let me quote the New Road to Serfdom throughout the 1990s the realization gradually dawned on the Europeans that they no longer needed US military protection close quote from which what followed well the European Union was able to assert itself as a distinct entity which had different and sometimes opposed values to the United States now there's nothing intrinsically wrong with that the US doesn't have a monopoly on right any more than any other country does but if you look at the particular issues on which the European Union has challenged Washington you see a mind in Europe there is not particularly conducive to freedom and democracy I mean imagine a map of the world where on that map are the biggest causes of dispute between the US and Europe I would say that they are Iran where the European Union is trying to jolly the ayatollahs out of their nuclear ambitions by being nice to them constructive engagement israel-palestine the EU takes very seriously as its its role as the main funder of the Palestinian state to the extent that it is having to circumvent its own rules on not financing terrorist organizations so as to keep funneling money to Hamas China where the EU has declared in principle is readiness to sell arms to the regime in Beijing even though it hasn't yet sold any and where it continues to isolate Taiwan and I would add let's say supranational ISM the International Criminal Court the land mine treaty is a g20 in kyoto processes and so on now on all of those you see a an ideological difference between Washington and Brussels Washington is pushing for democracy rather than stability the EU is pushing for stability rather than democracy both of them if you like are being true to their foundational principles the US was born out of a popular revolt against a remote and autocratic government and so it's sympathy to this day other things being equal tends to be with democratization now Daniel you want the United States to remain self-confident to retain the will to project its military power to continue a central role in Europe the Middle East China so you want all of that right now let me suggest to you an American point of view which involves one part fatigue and one part exasperation you said a moment ago that the European Union was able to assert itself and you gave example after example after example where they asserted themselves through talk but really only through talk so Milosevic gets out of control and the Balkans and the Europeans are totally impotent they simply do not pull themselves together to move in and contain a situation which is on their own Continent only the Armed Forces of the United States raining bombs on Serbs brings that situation under control or I give you an example from just a fortnight ago used the English term for two weeks just to make you feel at home here when we now know that terrorist plans for Mumbai style attacks were discovered these attacks were to take place in Britain and France and perhaps elsewhere in Europe now then who rains down predator bombs on Pakistan and Afghanistan to try to disrupt that plot who puts their troops in harm's way to try to contain that situation to address that situation and who to this very moment has not heard from a single European office holder so much as a single merci so why should Americans continue to bear the burdens and the insults of the Europeans take off the white man's burden and reap his old reward the blame of those you better the hate of those you guard I mean and not exclusively a white man's burden now of course but don't expect any thanks from those II guard that's that's not how human nature works some Europeans have been almost since the Second World War driven by this pathological need to bite the hand that freed them and can you argue to me from the point of view of American interests why we should continue to put up with these insults by the way III don't think it is in America's interest to maintain costly and on grateful Garrison's all over the world I think you need to be selective about where you do let me back up just a little bit farther because during the 1980s the late urban crystal are you familiar with this work okay the lady Irving Kristol was a kind of this was even during the Reagan years he said you know NATO is getting a bit out of hand here that made sense our spending a lot of money and having troops in Europe made sense when Europe was still recovering after the Second World War but these are all rich countries now we are infant iliza them we should bring our troops home and let the Europeans defend the Western Europe of course let them defend themselves because we must not cocoon them from reality let them encounter reality itself was that was he right about that well I in terms of NATO I think he he was ahead of his time no one would invent today a organization primarily designed to defend West Germany from a massed assault by Soviet t-72 s and yet you know if I look at the world now where is the biggest deployment of British troops massively the largest overseas garrison is not Iraq or Afghanistan we have 22,000 soldiers in western and we have 55 right right so why because no bureaucracy ever volunteers to disband it so I'll put the argument to you and then let you address that let you answer it the argument runs as follows the United States is now in about the same position that Britain was in in the middle of the last century right so China's rising India's rising we can cede our place as the superpower gracefully or with ill grace but cede it we must and do you want to know why that's an appealing argument to the people who have to burden the responsibilities of being the superpower because you look at George Bush who did the best he could discharging the responsibilities of the United States as an international enforcer of peace and proponent of democracy and the man is reviled and the man in Britain who stood up for him Tony Blair is covered in spittle at this stage in his career not only because of that no no what I mean there were loads of reason why are we spitting at yes but that well you're you're British so I won't argue with you but as best I can tell that is that was certainly the signal reason that he went white that's why it was reviled on the left there were there are loads of reasons later about Knightley different and correct reasons to revile in our labor that separate program and now we have Barack Obama looking physical read that Bob Woodward book he's trying to find his way here and what he senses is a political reality that if he goes if he commits himself to Afghanistan his own party will be against him and furthermore the great mass of the American people are just tired of it all so why shouldn't the United States look at Britain and say you know they actually had pretty good lives once they laid down their empire they go to off to the city they make a lot of money there's a quickly quite interested culture but students not a bad life to be number two or number three instead of number one what's wrong with that argument well I mean III don't think that you it always needs to be the us who goes in I think you you can't afford to be a little bit more picky about this and there is a downside definitely to running an expensive foreign policy there is a downside in terms of expense and there is a downside in terms of domestic freedom there is a contradiction in Russell Kirk's raise between an American Republican American Empire that said I'm glad you've got the big calls right I mean I think the world is a happier place because the United States played its part in defeating fascism and defeating the Soviet tyranny and it so it's not an all or nothing I mean you can be you can question some of the forward foreign policy positions without being a pacifist you know and I think the so you'd at least let me argue for bringing those 50,000 troops and West Germany huh I mean I did it's crazy for them to be there yeah yeah no no I mean I and and I by the way I think that for the UI I want the world is fortunate at the moment in a superpower you know we basically without you know with all the occasional errors that your country makes as all countries do I am glad that the preponderance our in the world is a liberal capitalist democracy rather than being Russia or China right or or the European Union all right segment five last segment what is to be done I quote you to yourself you were writing in The Telegraph in March 2008 I'm sure you know what's coming because you've got to live this one down I'm for Obama you wrote those words I'm for Obama as a conservative and as a friend of America I see huge attractions in an Obama presidency close quote explain yourself all right first of all it was very difficult to muster much enthusiasm for the Republican Party by 2008 this was a party which at its best had done extraordinary things for freedom and democracy in this country the party of Reagan the party of the contract with america but by the time of the 2008 presidential election it had gone in a different direction it had become a party of external protectionism and tariffs a party that was striking down states rights a party that had massively expanded the federal government the the budget deficit a party that it because rates would be worth than your child all kind of II yeah I in in the field of education in the field of euthanasia in the field of same-sex unions I mean wherever you stand on those issues surely they are things that you can negotiate for yourself through your Democratic mechanisms and procedures state-by-state it is crazy for Washington to be stepping in check george w bush and tundle and then it bear too much money all of that and then and then whether you thought it couldn't get any worse they became a party of bailouts and nationalizations it was very difficult by the end of 2008 to feel much enthusiasm for barack obama seemed to me someone who would make the u.s. more popular would provoke a certain amount of soul-searching from some of the more needy accounting americans it would cause him to re-examine their prejudices which it did actually lit mitt would let's be fair about that I had no idea then that the federal state would be 30% bigger now than it was then I mean to say you can let me up to feel merciful but you still have to make UEFA champions it seems an eternity ago on a promise of tax cuts and to put it as neutrally as possible that isn't what hath so when did you recognize that this man that there was a this was not going the way you had hoped or expected he was dealt a bad hand with the financial crisis but he did not play it as I had hoped he would he'd set himself up as a bipartisan figure you know he came to national detention in the first place with that speech about not slicing and dicing and having red states and blue states he he had positioned himself it seems to me as somebody who could do what a president had meant to do which is to be above party when people said of him he's all things to all men I would say well you know where is the dishonor in that the phrase comes from from as you know from 1 corinthians paul says i'll be--i'll come as a jew to the jew is a Greeks to the Greeks that's what a president I excuse you but only on grounds of youth Daniel II if we may you've made your one mistake that we looked at America will permit you ah now to prevent the Europeanisation of America you have to identify the reasons for it right so what is the political or even the psychological mechanism you have just laid out briefly on this program in detail in this book why it would be a terrible mistake for the United States to copy Europe with regard to immigration or health care or the economy or welfare or anything else and yet here we are doing it so what's the impulse why why does Barack Obama want this country to look more European by and large politicians are more warm about expansion of state power than the rest of us and the reason why politicians like an expansion of state power is because they personally stand to benefit I don't mean that it I don't mean to imply that they're corrupt or anything like that it's just that they think they have the answers we all do is it's natural to think that and therefore you you tend to be more impatient with constraints on your own power than you are on somebody else's but the great thing about this country is that because of the system your founders designed you still have the ability to control them so the impulse is just what it comes down to really is the usual self seeking impulse of the priestly caste right but it's almost always wiser than their leaders I mean I was really struck this week I left France and it was on strike as usual because of Sarkozy is raising the retirement age of 31 or something and people were marching with banners saying let's block the economy and strike till you retire it's not gonna be very long under the current system and then you arrive here and there are crowds on the street with banners saying don't tread on me taxed enough already who is John Galt you know guess which country is growing faster god bless america so in the new road to serfdom you right let me close with a heartfelt imprecation honor the genius of your founders preserve the freedom of your nation to whom do you address that Republican leaders Rush Limbaugh let listeners Sarah Palin hummed just what segments what's the Woolworths who do you expect to be able to stand up and change things this is addressed to everybody Hayek addressed the original Road to Serfdom famously to socialists in all parties he had also perceived the way in which political leaders tend to be keener on the centralization of power than the rest of us there's a wonderful line of Edmund Burke he was in in his reflections on the French Revolution talking about the way in which people are wiser than the chattering classes where he said because half a dozen crickets concealed beneath a fern make the field ring with their unfortunate while thousands of great cattle chew the cud in the shade of the Great British oak and are silent pray do not imagine that those who make all the noise are the own inhabitants of the field in this country as in mind as everywhere else people are wiser than their leaders I will always repose my trust in the oxen rather than the grasshoppers you know and I think you're going to be imposing yourself on the grasshoppers in a couple of weeks time two views of America this moment one is economist Thomas saw quote to follow Rome one of the greatest civil is the civilizations of all time as it degenerated and fractured is especially painful and view of the parallels to what is happening in America in our own times historian Paul Ray the political moment in which we live is a moment of great great hope the Obama administration is a gift to the Friends of Liberty decline and fall rebirth and Liberty what's your assessment the decline and fall of Rome happened because it became bureaucratized text centralized it's what brings a civilization down in the end same thing happened to the Ming's to the moguls to the Ottomans the genius of the West was pluralism variety the dispersal of power personal enterprise and freedom and that reached its highest incarnation in the Old Courthouse in Philadelphia which is why when I see this country making the same mistakes of the rest of the world has done going down this road towards federal czars more regulation higher taxes when I see power shifting from the 50 states to Washington from the elected representative to the federal bureaucrat from the state from the citizen to the state as a British conservative who likes to think of this country as being a repository for our traditional concepts of British freedom that really pains me you deserve better as a people and the world deserves better penultimate question the frontispiece of the new road to serfdom you comes from Thomas Paine's famous pamphlet comments that 1776 quote the cause of America is in great measure the cause of all mankind close quote why did you choose that like him I am a British subject interested and involved in the survival and success of American freedom you will perhaps allow me a measure of additional pride as a British conservative when I look at the structures of this country when I say that they they were not dreamed up in a vacuum if you go back and you look at what the Patriot leaders were arguing at the time they didn't see themselves as revolutionaries they saw themselves as conservatives as far as they could they were concerned all they were asserting was what they had always assumed to be their birthright as Englishmen and that's why I and I I don't think I'm unusual actually among among my countrymen in this regard when I look at the success of this country it's like a it's like a man looking at the success of a wealthy nephew who may have become wealthier than him and you sometimes have to tease him a little bit but secretly you're bursting with pride because you can see that it's it's the same ideology final question this will our interview will here just a few days before the election if you could address one sentence to Americans to ponder just before going into the voting booth what would you say Daniel be aware of how lucky you are how unique you are this country has been made different from the rest of the world because of a sublime set of institutions that were designed by exceptional men if one generation of leaders presumes to strike down those institutions in the name of short-term contingency it will make your country less American by which I mean less prosperous less democratic less free Daniel Hannan author of the New Road to Serfdom a letter of warning to America thank you for joining us thank you I'm Peter Robinson for uncommon knowledge and the Hoover Institution thank you

Channel: Hoover Institution

Views: 380,111

Keywords: HooverInstitutionUK, Tea Party, government, United States, Europe, welfare, economy, superpower

Id: Ufyov9RO8I0

Length: 35min 13sec (2113 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 29 2010

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Very interesting!