BY STEWART SLATER
It is a strange phenomenon in humanity that the same idea will often occur to different people at roughly the same time. Newton and Leibnitz invented calculus almost simultaneously. And spent decades arguing over who did so first.
Similarly, the late 2000’s were a (actually, the) Golden Age of animated films about penguins. Film pairs follow the iron law of Highlander and the subsequent solo careers of broken pop duos – there can only be one – so Happy Feet got all the glory, while Surf’s Up is forgotten. Which is unfortunate since it pulls off that essential feat of any successful kiddy film, saying one thing to the young, and something completely different to the old. What to the former is a fun tale of anthropomorphic avians is, to the latter, a brilliant pastiche of a ‘60’s surfing movie.
For those who haven’t seen it (and should, thus, consider themselves shamed), it is set at a surfing tournament where the scrappy young challenger takes on the highly successful, but not wildly popular champion who has, on occasion, an idiosyncratic understanding of the rules (Michael Schumacher with a board). The champ was not always the champ, of course, he ascended to the top step on the apparent death of his much-loved predecessor, The Big Z. Such movies being such movies, Z is not dead but is living a reclusive life in a hut as, frankly, a fat shlub. He has turned his back on what made him great, let himself go and given up.
My mind turned to Surf’s Up in the aftermath of J.D. Vance’s speech in Munich, he the idolising young challenger, shocked and disappointed when he finally meets his hero. The Veep’s criticism caused a mass paroxysm of harrumphing across the continent, proving that Europe can still unite when challenged – by words anyway… So vitriolic was the reaction that it made me think of the tantrum one might expect from a heroin addict told by a friend that they will no longer fund their habit and perhaps a stint in rehab might be in order… We are, as a rule, much happier to be a critical friend than we are to have a critical friend.
There was a lot of “my country right or wrong” even (perhaps especially) from those who generally regard patriotism as the last refuge of the scoundrel. There was a lot of tu quoque and deflection – ok, perhaps we don’t have perfectly free speech, but at least our kids don’t shoot each other at school. There were elements of self-refutation to some of the refutations – describing a speech defending free speech as “unacceptable” gets close to suggesting speech should be controlled, not free. There was not a little “how very dare you?” as if an uppity stable hand had criticised the duchesses’ riding and there was more “What’s it to you, anyway? Butt out!”
Paradoxically, the latter reaction reflects the very loss of confidence that Europe so volubly denies it is experiencing – a confident society which truly thought it was a “geopolitical actor” would just assume (rightly or wrongly) that others would be fascinated by it (18th/19th century China found the West’s interest entirely natural – it was, after all, the Middle Kingdom). But it also reflects a misunderstanding over how it is seen beyond its borders.
For America has, since its Founding, defined itself in opposition but also in relation to the Old Continent. To the colonials, Britain was not extending them the rights which, as British citizens, law and custom entitled them. Had they not been British, and had they not seen themselves as British, they would not have had the same complaints. Such unpleasantness may be long in the past, but America (and many Americans) continue to see themselves as Albion’s progeny – several of the panels of the doors of the Supreme Court feature scenes from English legal history, and its great Originalist justice, Antonin Scalia (whose name betrays no Anglo ancestry) described getting to London after a tour of Europe and finally feeling “home”.
Nor is this just an Anglosphere phenomenon. America’s entry into WWI was delayed over fears that the substantial German-American population would not wear a war fought against “their” people. Americans still flock to France, the country’s oldest ally, not just because it is France but because going to Paris has long been a rite of American passage – think Hemingway et al. We have just had four years of a majority English President cos-playing an Irishman. We may not think they are us, but they think we are them. To us they are (at best) friends, to them we are family.
In Surf’s Up, the criticism has the desired effect. The Big Z realises how far he has fallen from his past, returns to surfing and bests his rival (although, in an unusual sophistication for a children’s film, neither he nor his acolyte win the tournament). Should we expect the same after Munich? Will Europe be convinced of the benefits of absolute free speech? Will the bureaucracy stop interfering in elections? Will Britain decriminalise praying outside abortion clinics? In short, will it return to the liberal paradise the Vice President is convinced it was?
Probably not. For if Europe misunderstands its links to America, America (at least in the person of Vance) misunderstands its links to Europe.
That wise French observer of politics, Alexis de Tocqueville, once remarked that the New World colonies adopted the virtues and vices of their mother countries and turned them up to eleven (I paraphrase). The Founders may have been heavily influenced by the liberalism of the Enlightenment, but their Constitution was an extreme expression of it. England gave the world, in the person of Locke and Milton, the philosophical justification for Free Speech (possibly why Vance singled the country out for criticism), but it never had anything approaching the First Amendment. Blasphemy was only decriminalised in 2008 (and, some fear, may shortly be re-instated), and it was only forty years earlier that the Lord Chamberlain had lost his right to censor plays. It is only in the minds of classical liberals that Britain has ever been America in the North Sea.
If England has been less free than America, it has long been freer than the continent but that has not stopped either from treating Europe as liberal. After the war, the new hegemon made no attempt to reshape it exactly in its own image and not even George W. Bush attempted to launch “Operation European Freedom”. Older heads were wise enough to realise that political philosophies are like genera, not species. Just as a raven can be a raven, a magpie a magpie and both can still be corvids, so one can have absolute free speech, and slightly less than absolute free speech and still be liberal.
Nor, indeed, is one’s position on the spectrum fixed. The new Administration may be aggressive in its promotion of Free Speech (aggressive and perhaps inconsistent given the President’s stated desire to reform i.e. tighten libel laws), its predecessor seemed keener on the “managed liberalism” of the Europeans, pressuring, in Mark Zuckerberg’s telling, social media companies to censor content. Taken at face value, J.D. Vance’s America would not fight for Joe Biden’s America.
It may be that the divergence continues, America continually turning the dial up, Europe turning it down, or it may be that, like so much of history, a cycle is at work here and one side is at the top of the wave, the other its bottom. Not all administrations will have a social media baron with a dislike of the European Union near their top nor, as populists gain power, will Europe’s Overton Window remain shut. It may be that the two sides just drift apart, neither “feeling it anymore”. But America would do well to remember the Arabic proverb. If it no longer sees the continentals as brothers, it is still “me and my cousin against the tribe”. And the Europeans would do well to remember that a friend who never criticises is not a friend.
Stewart Slater works in Finance. He invites you to join him at his website.