When Swedes ask me where I am from (because it happens sometimes that my Swedish doesn't betray me), I tell them I am from Amerika, though it isn't my fault. I add the second half of the statement because I am not a nationalist. I had to be born somewhere. I happened to be born there. The chance of birth, thank God, has not shackled me altogether too much in a priori conventions and ideologies. I also add that second half for those sensitive souls who, depending on who is currently in the White House, grant me less social capital because of their own culturally self-evident ideologies.
This view to the chance of birth, while it has given me a margin of distance, has not eradicated my nationalism. It has however refined it some. That, combined with living in socialistic Sweden, has allowed for an honest critique and regular challenge of my political, social, and moral views.
As Nathaniel Hawthorne stated: "Human nature will not flourish, any more than a potato, if it be planted and replanted, for too long a series of generations, in the same worn-out soil. My children have had other birthplaces, and, so far as their fortunes may be within my control, shall strike their roots into unaccustomed earth."
I quote him not alone as part of my own experience, but because it is part of the process called globalization.
So here is a perspective, which has sort of solidified in my mind to date (though not enough that it isn't open to modification and critique) of a basic difference between the nation of North American known as the United States, and the collectivity of nations in the eurozone known as the European Union.
Without question, the ideas of Hobbes and Locke were highly influential in the directions modern political thought would take in both North America and Europe. We can state the obvious, that the United States followed after Locke’s “life, liberty, and property”, but there is a deeper relationship going on here. It might not be obvious―and it might not even be true!―but it seems to be possible to divide the two thinkers roughly between the two continents. That is to say, Europe and its respective states, as well as the EU itself, have followed in the wake of Hobbes, while the United States followed primarily in the path of Locke. One could spend hours explaining how both political thinkers affected both continents. This is a generalization of course, but it wouldn't hurt to explore the idea.
Some context: the historical outworking of ideas does not take place in a vacuum. The idea of a social contract began to emerge around the beginning of the 1600s and finally had its breakthrough mainly through Hobbes’ work Leviathan (1651). The author wrote it during a period of political unrest in England while he was in exile in France. The hypothetical state of nature was no more than a primitive state of anarchy of everyone against everyone, a view that could grapple with and explain for Hobbes the zeitgeist in which he lived. It is an easy connection between the civil strife of England and Hobbes’ “state of nature”, both of which he wished to distance himself from.
Because statecraft had as its goal order and the maintaining of order (and perhaps closer to home for Hobbes, the prevention of civil strife), he gave no room to revolt against authority. There could be no unjust law according to Hobbes because law itself was the codification of right and wrong. The sovereign hands down laws; the people obey them; order is maintained, and that is justice.
On the other side of the idea-ink war stood John Locke. He intentionally got mixed up in a revolution to give support and legitimacy to a certain king’s ascendency to the throne during the “Glorious Revolution” of 1688. His version of the state of nature wasn’t as dark as Hobbes’ everyone against everyone. It was a state of difficulty and discomfiture (because rights were so often disregarded) which created the social contract, statecraft to prevent the violation of rights inherent in the human state of nature. Even if he does diverge in some regards from Hobbes in that the state of nature isn’t a state of anarchy or civil war, war would inevitably appear quickly after this hypothetical moment of nature. To avoid this war, the social contract arises. Unlike Hobbes, he attempted to justify certain uprisings and rebellions as necessary. There is here the obvious connection to the American Revolutionary War to free itself from the king.
With these generalities in mind, the two minds can easily be differentiated when viewed from the standpoint of ethics. There are two great ethical spheres, generally speaking. One school of thought states that there is a right and a wrong, and that what is right or wrong is independent of the whimsical viewpoints of human beings. Like mathematical formula, this school states that right and wrong, being existences outside ourselves, are the discoverable ratios of relationships. This school (called naturalism) had its origins in Plato and Aristotle, as a reaction against the sophists of their day. The other school, positivism (not to be confused with positive, but is related to posit), states that there is no truth, no ethical laws outside ourselves. It is the group that determines right and wrong. In such a case, power, might makes right, is the inevitable conclusion.
According to Aristotle, human beings are “political animals”, meaning that it is in their nature to live among one another, and in some organized way. For Hobbes, the state of nature was previous to the society or the state. Hobbes rejected the Aristotelian view with the notion of the state as a construct. It was a construction to prevent the war of everyone against everyone. Right and wrong were created to maintain and legitimize an established order. Without these relativistic right and wrong construction, chaos would ensue. Locke on the other hand was a naturalist. Life and property were natural rights. The American Revolution would eventually lead to, and be justified in, a political thought of "inalienable rights" that were "self evident", rights that were Platonic ideals, independent from human thought or action.
But how does all this relate to the United States and the European Union? Historically, Europe was continuously dominated and oppressed by a strong and totalitarian church. This had two effects. After the reformation, and especially after the enlightenment, Europe moved increasingly towards secularism, while those persecuted by both the dominant church and eventually secular society, left for the shores of America. This set the direction for the U.S. as well. While the U.S. also moved towards a secularization of society, religious convictions were heavily solidified.
It makes sense then that, being steeped in a Christian religious tradition that was extremely Hellenized, that the United States would follow in the path of Locke. Christian religion held onto something TRUE, in and of itself, something that existed outside our own opinion or view of it. Inalienable rights then were the codification of these platonic and unchanging moral injunctions or self-evident truisms.
Europe on the other hand rejected religion, drifted towards an exclusively secular society. Religion does persist here, but on the whole the society does not claim religiosity. Recall that many left Europe for America because of religious persecution, not alone for failed revolutions. This affected Europe as well as the US. In rejecting the totality of the church, it rejected also the idea the are ethical principles outside, over and above our thoughts about these things. While the populace of the United States can generally be characterized as naturalistic, Europe is definitely relativistic, or positivist. It was only natural then to follow in the path of Hobbes, who stated that, in the state of nature, with everyone against everyone, right was determined by might. Laws were set up by states to ensure what the right was, and revolt (according to Hobbes) was intolerable.
Now before I lose you in these generalizations, let's look at the US Constitution and the EU Constitution. The US Constitution is written in the voice of the people. That is to say, "We the people" are defining what the role of government is and is not. Government is formed within the framework of limitations, is limited in what it can or cannot do. This is based on the Lockean principle that there are principles that are true, that there are rights that exist despite human behavior. Government is prevented from imposing itself upon these natural and inalienable rights.
The EU Constitution on the other is written in the voice of the state, laying down a law that is relative and positivist:
EU Constitution Article II-70 1. states: "Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion."
Article II-70 2. states: "The right to conscientious objection is recognised" (italics mine).
Compare this with the United States Constitution, Amendments, Article I: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or of the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
While both Constitutions produced a similar effect, that of law and order, the first is society recognizing rights, granting them to the people, because society, or the state, thinks them good and efficient. The second claims these as inherent in the people and, government being necessary, limits it to having no power over these things.
I don't want to stop here, because I think there is in the outworking a very big difference between these two viewpoints. They are ethical viewpoints, viewpoints of political philosophy. Living in Europe, and in Sweden specifically, I can't help but notice that I've had more social capital with Swedes when it happens that the President was also a democrat. Europeans LOVE American democrats. When Bush was in power, well, that was when I added the phrase about being American, that "it wasn't my fault". It was a buffer to prevent a loss of capital. Guilt by association. I was from a nation dominated by a Republican! You must be evil! I was pretty popular about the time of Obama's election. Wow, what a nation you are from! No joke!
I think this is connected. I think Europe has this paternal view of government that the US doesn't because it really does view government as the determiner of what is not only right and wrong, but what is TRUE and what is FALSE. In rejecting religion (again a generalization), Europe adopted, and heavily, a moral relativism. Multiculturalism under the secular rule of law is the name of the game in Europe. And it is the rejection of Christianity, as an entity of charity and responsibility to the people, that demanded that SOMETHING take over that role. The state is to the people of Europe what the welfare of churches are in the US.
And this is why the populace of Europe is often much more socialistic than the US in its views of the role of government. It is why, in Europe, democrats are more readily accepted US Presidents (because they want to regulate via the government a fairness that Republicans general think is the role of religion).
Now I don't want to take sides here on which is best, what is wiser, etc. I am not so nationalistic to do so. Time and evolution will determine that! I am a swing voter. I think both sides have valid points and have their place and their time. But I think these ideas definitely are based on two completely different ethical, and political, paradigms.
I will make a prediction. When the EU, slowly becoming a federal union, finally decides to unite federally, so the people of each state, rather than the states themselves, vote on who is going to represent them in parliament, at that point, I predict the EU will begin to swing in its paradigm closer to Locke, closer to inalienable rights inherent in the people rather than created and enforced by the state. And that may mean that the European Union might adopt some aspects of politics that look a little more like US Republicans.
Only if Christianity makes a comeback in Europe though.
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