At the Independent, Clemence Michallon replicates the Guardian’s magnificently ill-judged 2004 effort to influence voters in Ohio. She argues that Europeans should be able to vote in U.S. presidential elections.
No, they really shouldn’t be.
Still, this notion of Europe being due part-ownership over American democracy is not a complicated one to understand. It flows from the underlying European socio-political narrative that all power must be shared. Just as Europeans generally support vast redistribution of wealth, it’s not that great a stretch to support redistributed political power. The European Union, after all, is built on the idea that nations and individuals ultimately serve the collective.
But there’s also a moral theory here. Michallon suggests that America’s grand power means that its ability to affect lives abroad is far greater than that of other nations. This is true. Yet, she neglects to note that American power did not spring forth from the heavens. It was earned by a culture and people that endeavored hard to earn it. It is sustained by the unity of popular freedom with common opportunity. It is defended by constitutional protections that are guarded by law at home, and military force abroad. Other nations could have reaped the dividend of the founders’ democracy, but only if their own leaders had chosen to build it.
But they did not.
Put simply, the American democracy is a consequence of specifically American acts, not the acts of the world. Indeed, a better argument could be made that Americans should be able to vote in European elections than vice versa. Recall that it is America that saved Europe from Nazi and Communist totalitarianism, and then rebuilt the continent with the Marshall Plan. Recall that it is America that today defends the international order that offers vast economic opportunities to all the world’s citizens.
The basic point here is that Michallon ignores America’s story of exceptionalism. She does so because, like most Europeans, she regards America as lucky rather than exceptional. There’s an arrogance here that cannot be discounted. Michallon shows as much when she says she’s aware “that the US is extremely unlikely to go along with my idea. This isn’t a country that’s particularly known for avidly seeking external input.”
Yes, Clemence, we’re not going to go along with your idea. I personally would not suborn it until I was, in true Churchillian fashion, choking in my own blood. That said, there’s a special stupidity to that favored European notion that America languishes in the absent tolerance for external ideas. Because it ignores the fact that the greatness of America has long been furnished by our ability to attract the external into becoming internal — which is to say, in attracting talented immigrants pursuing better lives under a common American flag.
Yes, Michallon’s argument might be one that earns favored European reading. But it lacks moral and political legitimacy.
