Time for the European Love Affair to Die

It is high time that the Statist Democrats love affair for all things European was set aside for good and that America go in the direction that it was meant to from the beginning. In 1776, the United States declared independence from a foreign power that was holding back the potential that they saw for the country that they, not their colonial masters in England, had worked so hard to achieve. And now, the men and women who seem to think that they hold all the power of the American government want to revert back to the European way of thinking. They want to follow a European model of government that really is not necessary for the United States, and will only do more to drag it down than to lift it up.

The countries of Europe are of a different ilk than the United States. They are smaller, and as their populations grow, there is less and less space for them to expand. They can go to other countries within the EU, but then there is a language barrier that must be overcome and immigration laws that must be adhered too. In the United States, we still have a great deal of space that can be utilized for expansion if it is needed, which it most likely will be, as the population has doubled in the past half century. Different needs require different solutions, and our needs are not the same as those of Europe. So why look to them when we don't need to?

What does America need most of all in these troubled times? We need to return to the model of the Founders, though somewhat modernized. But this modernization, mind you, should not detract from the fundamental principles of liberty and popular authority that those men held so dearly to. While times have changed, the idea of a free society has not, nor should. All American citizens should be free to make a life that helps them to succeed (within legal bounds, mind you) and to make their own decisions, not have the government make them instead and dictate how a person should live. It seems that those who hold the majority think that in order for this nation to prosper, they are the ones who must have control over everything, and that is simply fallacious. When the government dictates to the people how they should live, liberty dies, and tyranny reigns supreme.

Let us look at economic regulation, for example. Now, one must understand that there will always be rules that must be adhered to, such as workplace safety standards, just wages and the like. However, then the government begins to intrude into businesses, such as the automakers, and tell them what they are going to do and how they are going to do it, then you begin to have problems. You have situations like that of General Motors, which for all intents and purposes has become Government Motors. The president of the United States actually forced out the former CEO and had him replaced by a man who has no experience working in the business he now runs. They are forcing standards upon the automakers to make the cars more fuel efficient. Now, do not get me wrong, I don't mind a car that can get more miles to the gallon, as long as the quality does not suffer because of it. But that is exactly what is going to happen, due to the fact that Congress has presented a time table to make cars get over 35.5 miles/gallon or more by the year 2012.

So they have three years to figure out a solution to this "problem": How do they make a car that is fuel efficient and will still keep the occupants safe in a collision? Let us go back in time real quick to the first oil crisis in the 1970's. During this crisis, something called Corporate Average Fuel Economy (or CAFE for short) Standards were passed in 1975. Now, while this increased the fuel economy of vehicles in America, it also meant that car makers had to begin making smaller, lighter cars, because they could not meet these standards with the larger, heavy metal cars they previously made. After this, cars began to have many more plastic parts that break easier (and for some reason are more expensive, it seems) and the bodies were constructed of lighter metals. And while this helped with meeting the CAFE standards, it also had an unintentional side effect, and that was the increase in deaths due to vehicular collisions, which, if one looks at the statistics, have been on the rise since CAFE standards were put in place. Now, let us come back to the present and put this situation in a modern light. In order to meet the 35.5 MPG, what are American automakers going to do? Instead of making a secure, safe car and creating an engine that has power and fuel efficiency, they will lighten the car so that the engine can remain the same and yet still meet the fuel efficiency standards. Another side effect is that though one will be purchasing a car with less substance, the price tag will increase, on average, by $1,300.

This is only one example of European style regulations that the Statist Democrats are attempting to implement in the United States today. They are doing their best to end the free market economy that has propelled America for decades and to replace it with a government run economy that does not allow for free thinking and the making of a profit for the business owner. Is this the liberty that the Founding Fathers were thinking of when they created this nation? I think not. Even the citizens of the European countries that have these forms of government that the Democrats are so enamored by are fed up with them. They are seemingly all for an economic union between the countries of Europe, but when it comes to all of the land use regulations and increasing calls to hand over more and more of their rights to the European Union, they are much more skeptical. And if they are skeptical of their own forms of government, shouldn't Americans be even more so if this is what the majority in power want for us?

It is time that this love affair for all things European was buried six feet in the ground, in an unmarked grave, to be forgotten forever. The men who met in Philadelphia in 1787 gave us a form of government that works, and they came from a generation of men who fought for freedom, and not just political freedom, but economic as well. The regulation and over taxation of American industry must be put aside and the free market, capitalist economy that this nation was built upon must be allowed, once more, to roam free and be allowed to flourish, or else this country will eventually fall away into the annals of history as a has been, a once mighty superpower that is not longer what it used to be. Is this truly what we want for our country? I should think, and hope, not.