Common History

Back when Lyndon Johnson was first elected to the senate, his victory margin was, as I recall, about 87 highly mysterious votes that had turned up in a previously uncounted ballot box; he was quickly dubbed, and admiringly known, in Texas as Landslide Lyndon.  Folks up north thought of the event as the acme of crooked politics, and were suspicious of Johnson thereafter.  Texans knew better.  He had lost his previous run for the senate by around the same margin because of another mysterious ballot box turned up in a recount by cohorts of a West Texas political boss who was an arch rival of Johnson.  The feeling in Texas was that a turnabout was fair play.  What on the east coast was a violation of basic fair election rules was, in Texas, part of the ongoing election process.  I think of that sometimes when I’m following the European Debt crisis.

A friend of mine who often visits Germany, and has continuing conversations with friends there, tells me that his German friends see the continuing Euro mess as a straightforward matter, “There are rules, and you follow them.”  My southern European friends see things differently.  To them, Greece, and other southern European countries were systematically squeezed by northern European banks like Deutsche Bank, operating a lot like the U.S. banks that made no-questions-asked loans and then rapidly foreclosed in the run-up to the U.S. financial crisis.  Then Greece sought under the table assistance from Goldman Sachs (who better than they to know how to rig an intricate financial deal?) to stave off Deutsche Bank.  But Sachs had rigged the deal so that Greece suddenly found themselves several billion more in debt to Sachs than they had expected, more than their treasury could bear.  Greece had been caught in a pincer movement between two great white sharks.  So they adopted the classic southern “ok, now I can’t pay, what do you do?” approach, which set off the cascading events of the European debt crisis.  In other words, the crisis was set off by the loose financial practices of northern European banks, so why should southern Europe unilaterally suffer for it?

It’s now being generally recognized as a culture clash between northern and southern European values, but of course, other layers of the problem make it even more complex.  There’s also the growing suspicion on the part of southern Europeans that Germany’s long-term goal is to obtain a political hegemony over all Europe by financial extortion based on the strength of the German economy, a sort of economic Fourth Reich.  That makes countries like France or Britain less than eager to support Germany’s proposals.  All Europe is sliding into recession because southern Europe’s economies are being leached away by excessive debt loads, while German manufacturers face loss of customers for their markets by the very austerity German financiers seek to impose.  Germany itself begins to show internal policy conflicts.  German policy makers show increasing signs of wanting to help other European countries in need, but continuing reluctance to honor such divergent values.  It becomes increasingly obvious that economics alone has no solution for problems originally described in purely economic terms.

While many issues must be resolved to find solutions to Europe’s problems, one of the most interesting ones is never mentioned.  Solving the crisis will involve some degree of unequal sacrifice.  A perception of such sacrifice with a willingness to proceed requires altruism, but in turn, such altruism involves a sense of group identity.  A big reason why differences in political values between Connecticut and Texas, as well as other large cultural differences, never come to a head is that both share highly mobile populations and a crowded common history.  Texans frequently live in New England and New Englanders in Texas.  They both know what it’s like to live in the other place.  Just as important, they share common heritages, from the War of 1812, celebrated this year in both places, through to rocket probes on Mars.  "We Americans" is a common phrase.  Differences loom far smaller than commonalities.

I have never heard the phrase "We Europeans" from the lips of a European.  In Europe, Germans remain intensely German, and Spaniards Spanish.  In Italy, Florentines remain suspicious of Neapolitans.  And I have never heard a European discuss the common history of, for instance, Germany and Spain.  Each place has an exciting and memorable history, but a European history is a compendium of the histories of European countries, not a history of all together.  One never gets a sense of shared hardships overcome, shared triumphs, shared places of pilgrimage.  A European history is needed that reminds people of their common heritages and values, not their differences.  It is there: the era of the Holy Roman Empire, for example, had a more cross-national nature than anything in Europe today.  Charles Martel at Tours and the Venetian Fleet at Lepanto won great battles on behalf of all Europe.  Common memories and common heroes should abound.  But instead, European countries today compete, often bitterly, between each other for the European championship in soccer and blame each other for their problems..  No such competition and no such bitterness occurs between states in the U.S.  Until they can recognize a unity that goes far beyond a common currency, Europeans will never succeed in sharing a healthy common economy.