Is the Future of Europe One of Freedom?

At a graduation ceremony at Charles University several summers ago, Maart Lar of Estonia addressed this question and answered that the future of Europe depended on whether the direction of change was toward the New Europe or the Old Europe.  The New Europe offered freedom and new possibilities, the Old Europe alternatively offered protectionism and bureaucracy.  Unfortunately, France and Germany pull the EU toward the Old Europe and not the New Europe.

Last Thursday night Anthony Evans and I attended Timothy Garton Ash's talk on Europe and Freedom.  I have been reading Ash with great benefits since the 1980s and find his intellectual project of writing the "history of the present" to be inspiring.  When I first read him I had the experience of wishing I could possess his skill with the written word and his insight into the revolutionary changes we all witnessed in 1989 and 1991.

Garton Ash is now a professor at Oxford and a well known political journalist.  His talk reflected his latest project which is to persuade his audience (whether through spoken or written word) of the powerful role that Europe could play in the world-wide battle for freedom.  Europe, he contends, must replace the US as the beacon of freedom. At the LSE talk he gave the following core claims of the European freedom project:

1. rule of law
2. religious toleration
3. independent media
4. agenda for development assistance to the 3rd world
5. cannot separate the means of attaining freedom from the ends of freedom; as the polish dissident Adam Michnik said during the Solidarity movement -- 'Those who start the revolution by storming the  bastile, will end up being hung at the bastile.'
6. No stable democracies go to war with one another --- support stable democracies
7. Humility -- find value in alternative civilizations

The challenge for Europe with regard to freedom is how to move from the politics of invitation, induction and inclusion, to a politics of dealing with neighbors who are not members of the EU and who will not be offered membership to the EU.

This is especially important for Europe's dealings with Turkey and Russia --- which are in a fundamental sense the two countries in Europe where Europe fades away as one moves further into the respective countries.  The freedom story of Europe, Garton Ash insisted, is one of peace and reconcillation.  In telling this story, there will be a variety of stories that must be told and numerous sins that must be forgiven.

It is not clear to me that Garton Ash has a compelling story to tell.  The concerns of Maart Lar are very real.

My favorite part of Garton Ash's talk was in the remarks leading up to his talk when he was explaining the task of the historian of the present.  He argued that when a politician speaks we expect him to tell stories, but we neither expect these stories to be factual or true.  When a novelist writes, when they are a good novelists, they tell us stories that are true, but we don't expect them to be factual.  But when we read a historian of the present, we expect that historian to be factual, and if he/she is a good historian the stories will be both factual and true.

Story-telling is what we do in the human sciences, but Garton Ash hit the nail right on the head in stating that our stories must be factual and if we are good social scientists they will also be true.

Unfortunately for Garton Ash -- who is an outstanding historian and writer -- his story about Europe and Freedom might string together facts, but it doesn't ring true.

Comments

[Rafe]

Gerard Radnitzky took a rather different line on freedom in Europe, it can be read as a warning and we have to hope it is not too late for the lessons to be learned and converted into policies. In brief, the European miracle was a pre-democratic achievement and it was based on three things, limited government, free trade and the separation of politics from religion.

In his words

"It is an open question whether the relatively free society, which can support autonomous sciences and is supported by it, which grew out of the ‘European Miracle’ and which constitutes a unique and fragile exception in human history, will be an episode or an enduring achievement. Much will depend on whether it will be possible to educate the educable sections of the population and above all the future decision makers so that they understand the functioning of modern society and economy. This is a cognitive and also an educational task. The comparative institutions approach outlines the consequences of various institutional arrangements: the ways institutions work out for people living under them, what opportunities various systems offer, what sort of life is possible under them. It will then be up to the individuals to choose between giving individual freedom priority in the social and public sphere or to accept some form of slavery under a totalitarian system, including unlimited democracy in the sense of the dictatorship of the majority as a special case of totalitarianism. Thus, a position taking on value issues is indispensable. Hayekians posit the value of individual freedom. In my opinion, the contractarian approach to Constitution and State conceals the value issues. Values are traded off all the time. Sometimes people sell themselves into slavery if they are paid for it — as we witness in connection with the modern welfare state. however, there is no trade-off between freedom on the one hand and economic success and scientific progress on the other hand. The two are inseparable: economic growth has come from economic freedom and competition, and scientific progress has come from a free market of ideas and intertheoretical competition."

It should be noted that the European Community is in the process of dismantling the 'European Miracle' or at least placing it under severe strain. A similar process has bipartisan support in the US.

This is the full article which I have put on line in the Rathouse as a community service.

http://www.the-rathouse.com/radscience.html