Previously, I have commented on Michael Barone’s book, Hard America, Soft America, which portrays the two different worlds occupied by those in our country who are products of the demands of competition (hard) versus those who have avoided or have not been subjected to such rigors in education, employment, and other walks of life (soft). Now comes Tom Friedman with his new book, The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century, which vividly outlines the new realities of what he calls Globalization 3.0, a phenomenon which has, in a very brief period, not only shrunk the world from “a size small to a size tiny”, but has flattened the playing field at the same time. By flattening, he means that this latest phase of globalization is not being driven by the West, nor by governments, but by non-Western, non-white individuals, led by the mass of entrepreneurs and empowered individuals in China and India. For whether intended or not, and most of it wasn’t, the “dot com” boom and bust of the late 1990’s wired the world with the technologies and infrastructure that has empowered and enabled many millions, if not billions, of these folks to be fully competitive with the West at all levels of the production and value-added chain. We’re not talking low-wage, labor intensive outsourcing here, we’re talking high value-added from very high speed knowledge-based industries conducted by very competitive and capable people and, as Friedman notes, “the Indians and Chinese are not racing us to the bottom, they are racing us to the top”. In addition, one of the most important factors to note is that, unlike America and Europe, they are not burdened by the sunken costs of old delivery systems; they can leap immediately into the new systems enabled by the new technologies.

It should be pretty obvious how this scenario relates to the notion of “soft America”. We are decades behind in restructuring our education system, both at the secondary and higher education levels. But more importantly, we are nowhere near the mindset and the sense of urgency necessary to make such a commitment. Even the use of the word “competition” is shunned by most of our education establishment. The current mindset of “leave no child behind” is noble, but not good enough. Access should be a high priority, but should not be accomplished at the expense of proficiency and excellence. A recent letter to the editor in the Wall Street Journal said it well: (In considering the trade-offs),…….”the interests of this country will be determined by whether we can meet the challenges of China, India and other nations by producing large numbers of graduates who exceed our expectations as engineers, scientists, and scholars, and who can meet competition for world leadership and hegemony with innovation in science and commerce”. In the new “flat earth” environment, this objective will not be accomplished by a soft America.

Question for the day—what is the most important issue of our time in America, except for national defense? Is it gasoline prices or energy policy, education, stem cell research, immigration policy, Social Security reform, universal health care, or any of the other weekly hot buttons of the polls and focus groups? No, it is none of these. I submit that the most urgent strategic issue of our time is the restoration of the constitutional order and ending the assault on representative democracy. Why? Because without this restoration, none of these other things will matter. This is the disheartening part of the deal forced upon and accepted by the Republican Senate leadership by the “gang of 14” assembled to avoid the showdown over judicial confirmations, ostensibly in the interests of Senate tradition and “comity”. This showdown has been brewing for over forty years, and it is past time to have it. Now, just when we seemed finally to have gathered the courage to consummate it, the party granted the mantle of leadership and the obligation to govern by majorities expanded in three consecutive elections folded. It capitulated to forces that have spent every waking hour over four decades undermining the constitutional rule of law in favor of a postmodern ideology grounded in the concept of the “living constitution”. If Republican control of the Senate doesn’t count for judicial confirmations, it doesn’t count for anything. Many have said that this deal was essentially an agreement reluctantly accepted to buy time to confront the issue on another day. Hope springs eternal, but often overcomes experience. 

“This constitution is in its way, a daughter of French thought.”—French President Jacques Chirac.

A very perceptive quote, for, in fact, the document in its essence is a direct derivative of the ideals of the “general will” as embodied in the thought of the French philosophes who formed the ideology that led to the French Revolution, an ideology that peaked in 1789! Margaret Thatcher was even more perceptive when she wrote, “During my lifetime most of the problems the world has faced have come, in one fashion or another, from mainland Europe, and the solutions from outside it”. And if you think about it, she is correct—the nihilism of World War I, Nazism, even Marxism—all have European roots.

Hopefully, as a result of the resounding defeat of the European Constitution by French and Dutch voters (even if many of the reasons for the rejection were not the right ones), reasonable heads can prevail in returning to first principles and rejecting the whole concept of a transcendent European superstate. This would be the best news for Europe, America, and the world, but I am not optimistic, for reasons that have much to do with the source of Europe’s underlying problem and the unwillingness of its elites to recognize or confront it. For the problems are not primarily economic or political, but cultural and moral, and grow out of the rejection of these first principles and the very essence of French thought to which Chirac alludes as well as, to a somewhat lesser extent, German ideas.

It is clear from all indications—economic, political, demographic, and spiritual—that Europe suffers from a severe crisis of confidence. A society that will not even reproduce itself suffers from a malaise that cannot be explained by the gross national product or unemployment numbers. For an analysis of the true underlying crisis, I suggest George Weigel’s book, The Cube and the Cathedral, in which he submits that, possibly, Europeans are at least finally beginning to ask the deeper question about their future—European unification for what? He further notes that, in this cradle of Western Christianity, the underlying constitutional debate must ultimately answer the following question: Is it possible to construct and sustain a democratic political community absent the transcendent moral reference points for ordering public life that Christianity offers the political community?

I recently wrote that it is not difficult, even for people with very little faith, to recognize a providential hand at work in the choice of Karol Wojtyla as Pope John Paul II at a critical juncture in history to help liberate Eastern Europe from totalitarianism. Is it a bigger reach to suggest that same providence at work in the selection of his successor? After all, the very name he chose, Benedict XVI, is a throwback, not so much to the last Benedict of the early 20th century, but to St. Benedict, one of the patron saints of Europe and the founder of Western monasticism, which was greatly responsible for creating what we have known as European culture. Might this mean, as some have suggested, that he will call for a revival of the Benedictine movement to restore the foundational premises of this culture? We’ll see. He will make his first big splash at World Youth Day in Germany in August. That’s not a bad place to start the campaign to save Europe from itself—again.

Who can doubt that the recent announcement that a Chicago bankruptcy judge allowed United Airlines to unload its unfunded pension liability on the federal government is potentially the break in the dam for the next crisis of moral hazard a la the savings and loan fiasco of the 1980s? Can a similar taxpayer bailout of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation be far behind? The good news from this is that it may finally force us to come to grips with the antiquated nature of these defined benefit plans, both privately and publicly sponsored, including the Social Security program, and take steps to replace the entire edifice with defined contribution plans. The bottom line is that we can no longer sustain the unreasonable paternalistic retirement and health care commitments we have made, and we are in the third generation of this lie.

Someone, I think it was George Will, recently wrote that companies like General Motors and other members of the Fortune 500 have become giant health care and retirement plan monoliths, employing thousands of people who do nothing else but handle the benefits plans of employees, retirees, and their beneficiaries, in essence as intermediaries for government. We need to get them out of this business and get them back to focusing exclusively on their core competencies. Will also noted Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s comment that we, as a people, are turning away from government and “the common ethic of provision through government”. If that is true, and I hope it is, it’s not a minute too soon. It’s just too bad that it will probably require a breakdown of both the health care and retirement finance systems and the pain that will follow for us to extricate ourselves from these fossils.