The European Elite, lost in the Intellectual Desert

Ken Anderson at Volokh looks at the reaction of one of the pre-eminent European Philosophers to the debt crisis and the threat to the euro. The reaction: this is the best you can do?

In the process of blaming the Germans, however, he also sends a collateral attack on the amoral, cool calculation of interest form of thinking that arises an attachment to economics-rational interest forms of thinking, on the one hand, and an atavistic attachment to sovereignty, on the other. So, a narrow utilitaritarianism in the form of rational choice economics in the service of an outmoded sovereignty. Habermas’ response is to call down for doubling down on the bet on European union in every sense — economic, fiscal, political, and the construction of a shared European identity;

Do it again, only harder. Halbermas rejects not only the response of the European governments, he rejects the example of this side of the pond as well:

Hmm ... Habermas, and the European elite for which he is the celebrated chief public intellectual, are not exactly enamored of that homely American sentiment, “Here, the people rule.” It is impossible within Habermas’ account — faithfully reflecting German and European history — to disentangle patriotism from nationalism, a fundamental difference of political experience that is one of the chief reasons why American intellectual elite attempts to ape their presumed European betters are so far-fetched, ill-suited, and ultimately ugly. (The historian John Lukacs has written deeply on this distinction; it is one that, I sorrow to say, eludes most international law professors of my acquaintance.) The inability to formulate such a distinction is a principal reason for the European elite attachment to both the EU and the ideals of global constitutionalism.

He's in his own mental box and can't get out. Never mind that things aren't working, and the wheels are starting to come off; never mind that the United States has outperformed the European Union experiment throughout the entire lifetime of that experiment. Pay no attention to those existence proofs - the philosophy has to be correct.

Sheesh. And these guys like to sneer at us for being idiot cowboys.