#464: Is the Common Good the Enemy of Sovereignty—or Vice-Versa?

  A recent Harvard discovery suggests why this Sunday's French Presidential Elections French should interest Americans, and especially American Catholics.

"France for the French" vs. France, member of Europe

The French Election

Some observers have said the 2017 election for president of France is all about sovereignty, since Marine Le Pen wants to pull France out of the European Union and Emmanuel Macron wants to stay in the EU but reform it.

Le Pen’s supporters believe the EU Impinges on France's sovereignty as a nation; they want their country back, their money back, their borders closed, their industries protected, their immigrants expelled. They want “France for the French.”

Macron's supporters often do not actually support his politics or agenda, but they support France's continued membership in the EU. They know this means sacrificing some of the nation’s sovereignty: the Euro replaced the Franc, trade is subject to EU "free trade" regulations, the borders are open to anyone from the EU, even the traditional French license plates have been replaced by euro-style plates. But those prepared to vote for Macron believe that giving up some national sovereignty serves the common good of both the French people and Europe as a whole, especially in bringing peace to a chronically war-torn continent (see CrossCurrents # 463).

Catholic Social Teaching (CST) acknowledges the dilemma here. On the one hand, CST makes promoting the common good a top priority, which leaves little room for a self-serving agenda that ignores the effects on others. Pope Francis in particular has decried the “Exclusion” of others that occurs when policy is set to benefit some narrow part of any population.

On the other hand, CST also values “subsidiarity”—the principle of keeping decisions at the most local level possible, and solving problems by the participation of those closest to the problem.

The EU clearly aims to serve the common good of Europeans, but that means decisions get made, not at the local or regional or even national level, but at the international level which sometimes is far removed from the people affected. So common good and subsidiarity sometimes clash. How can this clash be addressed?

Some, like Julius Krein, editor of American Affairs, take a hard line view of sovereignty. He argues that internationalism of any kind cannot really achieve the common good: for him, the real common good comes only with national sovereignty:

“The only democratic institutions that we have are national institutions.  So if you get rid of the nation-state, what you’re really doing is getting rid of democracy.”

In other words, Krein considers that, to serve common good, all sovereignty must be national.  This is exactly what Le Pen is proposing in her campaign, and it is exactly what Macron is opposing.

Wednesday Night's Debate

But it strikes me that such a hard line is completely arbitrary and also completely contrary to our experience as Americans.  That’s why last week’s Harvard discovery is so interesting.

The Harvard Find

Two Harvard researchers, Danielle Allen and Emily Sneff, have recently reported the discovery of an early handwritten parchment copy of the Declaration of Independence--only the second such copy in existence.  They call it the “Sussex declaration” after the location of its discovery in England. 

The significance of the discovery is that this version is slightly different from the one in the national archives.  That original in 1775 reflected the practice of the Continental Congress of having state delegations sign official documents as a group, with state labels for each group.

But the Sussex declaration dates from the 1780s.  By then the War is over, and war debts have led to conflicts among the states, especially farming states vs. the coastal mercantile states.  Eventually these conflicts would lead to a constitutional convention, but already the clash was between federalists (who saw the new nation as a single united people) and anti-federalists (who saw it as a collection of states).  The issue here was whether sovereignty would belong to the nation as a whole, or whether each state would retain its own sovereignty. 

The Sussex Declaration

This newer version shows the balance shifting to the federalists. Allen points out the key difference:

“The Sussex Declaration scrambles the names so they are no longer grouped by state. It is the only version of the Declaration that does that…This is really a symbolic way of saying we are all one people.”

Of course, during the time between these two versions, the US was governed by the Articles of Confederation, adopted in 1777 and ratified in 1781.  The guiding principle here was to preserve the independence and sovereignty of each state.  It legalized the Continental Congress, but gave that Congress very little power. There was no president, no judiciary, no executive agencies, no tax base--which meant no way to pay off the war debts.  Even the Congress had only one body, comprised of state delegations.

Shifting Sovereignty

The Articles of Confederation failed, because the national government lacked enough power to perform its essential duties.  This provoked a Constitutional Convention and eventually led to the U.S. Constitution which governs us today.  The essential difference is that the U.S. Constitution shifted much of our sovereignty from individual states to the nation as a whole.  But the shift involve major compromises, including a Congress split into two houses; Senate representing the states, and the House of Representatives representing the people by proportional vote.

In other words, US history is rooted in a compromise which recognized that sovereignty needed to be shared between the nation and its member states.  When Krein says that our only democratic institutions are national institutions, he is simply ignoring our own history.

What is happening in Europe follows a direct analogy to U.S. history.  If we think of France as a member state of the European Union, we can see that the issue of sovereignty, and the conflict over how much sovereignty France should sacrifice to the common good of Europe, is precisely the same issue as the argument over States’ rights vs. Federal power in the US.

From the point of Catholic Social Teaching, this means that American history can help show us how the tension between the common good and the principle of subsidiarity can be resolved.

We don’t need to look into the distant past to observe this history.  Recent events provided ample examples.  These show that debates over shifts in sovereignty reflect a tension that still exists in American Life.

Current Examples

1. Death Penalty. When Dhzokar Tsarnaev was tried for his role in the Boston marathon bombings, his trial took place in Massachusetts, which rejects the death penalty—and yet he received a death sentence, because his crime was determined to be a violation of Federal law.  Thus Massachusetts could not control the judicial process because the authority of the Federal government prevailed. The state does not enjoy absolute sovereignty

2. Sanctuary Cities. When Donald Trump attacks the notion of sanctuary cities, he is pitting the rule of local law enforcement in preserving public safety against the interests of the immigration authorities to locate and detain illegal immigrants.  Most states that have sanctuary cities are claiming that their law enforcement officials cannot be forced by the Federal government.

3. Healthcare. The current struggle to repeal Obamacare involves the question of whether the U.S. government will continue to mandate coverage, or the states will have the option to seek alternative plans.  Obamacare relied on the sovereignty of the Federal government; the repeals are pushing for state sovereignty.

4. Border Wall. Donald Trump’s border wall involves the Federal government imposing construction in many border states that oppose a wall.  Here again, the common good becomes the rationale for overruling local decision-making.

5. Tribal Sovereignty. When the Wampanoag Tribe tries to establish a casino on Martha’s Vineyard, this pits the tribe as a sovereign nation vs. the power of the local community, and invokes both state and Federal power to resolve the issue.  In this case, the dispute is about sovereignty on four different levels.

6. Gay Marriage. In 2003, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court legalized gay marriage, exercising its own authority to regulate marriage on the state level.  But when the US Supreme Court imposed its Federal authority over state laws and regulations, gay marriage became legal across the US. 

7. “Romneycare.” Obamacare’s rules for health care were remarkably similar to the rules that already existed in Massachusetts under the program supported by a Republican Governor Mitt Romney. Romneycare reflected the state’s sovereignty, Obamacare reflected the federal government’s sovereignty

The Moral of the Story

In all of these cases, the question of sovereignty has been resolved on a case-by-case basis.  It is true that some people would prefer the Federal government to always impose its will over states, while others would prefer that states always get to decide all matters for themselves without any Federal interference.  But the vast majority of Americans accept a constant balancing act between two (or more) levels of legitimate authority.

Thus life in “these United States” involves a chronic but healthy tension between the sovereignty of the nation and the sovereignty of the states.  Neither sovereignty is absolute, so a Federal System like ours requires repeated negotiation to redefine the shifting limits of each sovereignty.

And that is exactly what Europe is going through today, especially if we think of each country as something like our states. 70 years after the Treaty of Rome established the idea of a united Europe, its federal system is still being formed.

The European Union has reached a moment much like the crisis caused by the Articles of Confederation.  In other words, its governing treaties are failing to provide the right mix of sovereignty between the European Union itself and the member states. 

It seems that, if Europe is to serve both the common good and honor the principle of subsidiarity, it will need to find ways to democratize its operations and reflect comment local and national interests and preferences rather than make all decisions by some remote process that does not reflect public will.

But the failure of the Articles of Confederation did not lead to the failure of the United States; it required instead a reformed federal system. Europe faces the same challenge, and France’s commitment to meeting that challenge (rather than quitting to protect its own sovereignty) will say much about Europe’s future prospects.

 © Bernard F. Swain PhD 2017

#451: Why France—and Europe—Need a New Future

The triple crisis of terror attacks, refugees, and Brexit (Britain’s possible exit from the European Union) show that the EU’s original dream of a unified “Christian Europe” is over.  But a truly Christian vision could be key to building the kind of future these crises call for. 

PARIS--As the French government this week extends France’s state of emergency for two more months, the tension persists in this city following two major attacks in 15 months. 

As my bus approached Charles De Gaulle Airport last week, the driver announced a “bomb alert” that forced him to skip my terminal (A shuttle train and lots of walking got me back).  Airport security was also a good deal more rigorous than usual.  The day I flew authorities announced that last month’s Brussels attacks were originally aimed at two Paris locations--specifically, the commercial center at La Defense and an “unnamed Catholic association.” And one restaurant owner acknowledged that his business had dropped dramatically since the attacks, as tourists traffic is down.

Yet mostly Parisian life remains remarkably normal.  Clusters of Tourists toting smart phones on selfie-sticks still trudge up and down the Champs Elysees.  The famed monuments are still open and still attract long lines.  The streets and subways are still laced with pickpockets, panhandlers, and the homeless.  The Metro itself displays no obvious extra security beyond measures dating from the 1995-1996 subway bombings.  On Friday night in the Latin Quarter, at the same hour as the November attacks, young people still jam outdoor cafes and line up outside clubs. 

Some parks had extra security (the Jardin du Luxembourg was briefly locked down), as did the University of Paris (no entry to the Sorbonne’s courtyard without a student ID), but all that was for the most Parisian of reasons: widespread student street protests (this time, over a new work law threatening to alter their future working conditions). 

On the surface, then, Paris carries on largely as if nothing has happened--but everyone knows that things will never be the same. Parisians persist in their routines lest they hand victory to the terrorists by allowing them to dictate how Paris lives.  But they also know that a future fraught with constant tension and risk is not acceptable. 

So what is next? 

No one here talks of banning or restricting Muslims.  The Muslims I spoke to feel accepted, not stigmatized-- but I spoke to people already assimilated into the core of French life: shopkeepers, restaurant owners, and servers.  And obviously many Muslims in Europe have not been assimilated--not because they are Muslims, but because they are Arabs or Berbers or Turks, who carry a culture that does not match European ways.  And clearly some places--like Molenbeek, the Brussels neighborhood that proved a breeding ground for both the Paris and Brussels attackers—have become deep pockets of isolation, alienation, and resentment.  This has left some young people easily influenced or even “inspired” by those who justify violence by fraudulently invoking Islam

What has gone wrong?  Why is that resentment and anger bubbling over now? 

One opinion I heard came from a woman with decades of experience observing policymakers in both France and Europe.  Her connections include high level academic and business institutions, NATO, the EU, and the UN. 

Her response to my questions: the process of decolonization was badly managed, or even bungled. 

As she spoke I recalled my own school days in the late 1950s when every addition of “My Weekly Reader” (a current events newspaper distributed in my elementary classes) contained another story about a newly independent nation.  These included, of course, many former French Colonies, especially along the Mediterranean coast of Africa and the Middle East which the French call “The Maghreb.”

According to my French commentator, the long-term effects of ending colonialism were never really thought through.  Most Europeans agreed that independence for their former Colonies was necessary, though the mechanisms and timing were controversial and provoked both polarization and violence in France, including assassination plots against Charles De Gaulle. 

But the long-term consequences were not understood or prepared for--probably because they were never considered.  In the former colonies, this led to conflict between those content to maintain the previously imposed colonial (i.e. European) culture, and those insisting on a return to traditional, pre-colonial ways.  This included returning to a reliance on traditional religion--Islam--in lands where French-styled secularization (“laicité”) had been established for decades. 

For the colonizers, the process also brought profound change: a steady influx of formerly colonized peoples into the home country.  In France, this meant a huge influx of both blacks from central and western Africa, and an even larger influx of Arabs and Berbers from all over the Maghreb.  This process began around 1960 and continues today, accelerated by the disruptions of Al Qaeda, the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the Syrian civil war, the Arab Spring, and the rise of ISIS.

The effects on France cannot be overstated.  France has been a unified state longer than any other European country.  For centuries its monarchy worked long to impose the French language and national identity on the country’s regions.  Thus the Celts in Brittany, the German speakers in Alsace, the southerners who spoke Occitan or Italian, and even the Basques, all acquired a single official identity.  This veneer of homogeneity survived the Revolution and remains a cornerstone of French Life.  For most French, the nation’s unifier is the state itself--whether that means Louis XIV or Napoleon or De Gaulle or the current leadership. 

The assumption was that such unity would apply even to migrants from former colonies.  After all, France considered all its colonies part of France itself, and brought the French language, culture, and religion to every colonial outpost.  (To this day, residents in the remaining French possessions vote in French elections.) 

But 60 years into decolonization, France has millions of residents with colonial origins who are too young to remember colonial days.  They cannot say if colonial life was good or bad--they only know that they continue to be considered and treated as outsiders.  They learn French in school but speak Arabic or a tribal language at home and among their peers.  They have their own food, music, and customs—and their own religion.

 All this has broken through France’s veneer of homogeneity. For all the public rhetoric about recent arrivals “becoming French,” the fact is that decolonization has introduced social, cultural, and religious pluralism into a country that is neither experienced with nor committed to the kind of pluralism we already know in the U.S. 

The failure to develop an adequate process for integrating the post-colonial peoples means that many of them remain unassimilated into “the nation.” Decolonization gave them juridical freedom, but it did not give them a place in French life (much like Emancipation failed to give U.S. blacks their rightful place in American Life).

One further problem: since 1905 France has been officially a secular nation, where religious practices are subordinate to public policy.  There is no premium on religious liberty, as in the U.S.  Over the last century, the Roman Catholic Church has learned to accept this restriction, but Muslims might naturally contrast this with the open or even established practice of Islam in their lands of origin.

What can be done?

As I explained in CrossCurrents #350, the European Union has its roots in a Catholic, personalist vision for a peaceful, unified, Christian Europe.  My recent trip confirms that it is time to recast that vision before Europe breaks down.  This will take several steps.

First, the problem must be acknowledged. The legacy of colonialism is that Europe is no longer simply a “Christian continent,” even in its cultural underpinnings (let alone its actual religious practice, which has long been in decline).  Personalism can still ground a vision of European unity and peace--but not by presuming a “Christian” system.  While Europe’s heritage is undoubtedly Christian, its culture is now largely secular, and its population is now both religiously and ethnically diverse.  A new vision must include them all.  Failure to do this will perpetuate violence.

Second, public expectations of migrant populations must change.  Unlike the U.S., Europe has not been a land of immigrants--but it is now.  Not only must Europe find out how to welcome them into their midst, it must also find ways to help them belong and give them a stake in the dominant culture around them.  If they see no benefit in that culture, they will have nothing to lose by attacking it.  Thus Europe must not only accept newcomers, but also make them feel at home.

Third, integrating new peoples will be neither easy nor simple.  The New York Times, profiling the Molenbeek neighborhood, distinguished two groups of Muslims.  The Turks feel little connection to Belgian culture but also expect little, and lived in stable, mostly peaceful isolation.  But the Berbers from Morocco inherit the effects of French colonialism, speak French, understand the prevailing customs and culture, but do not feel welcomed or accepted. So their isolation is resentful and dangerous—and the attackers come from this group.

In their recent book Why Muslim Integration Fails in Christian-Heritage Societies, scholars Claire Adida, David Lattin, and  Marie-Anne Valfort argue that “anti-Muslim discrimination is a significant social phenomenon,” in France, Belgium, and the rest of Western Europe. It will take new, different policies to correct the situation.

Fourth and finally, this all means that recasting the new vision for Europe will require careful and creative planning about how to promote better integration of these new people.  This will have to include altering attitudes on sides, creating opportunities for disaffected people to invest in the surrounding culture, and inviting these people to identify as Europeans.  This in turn challenges traditional Europeans to simultaneously acknowledge their Christian heritage but then demonstrate radical Christian hospitality by welcoming their “Muslim neighbors” with open arms into a new, pluralized vision of a shared and peaceful future.

   © Bernard F. Swain PhD 2016

#450: Attacking Brussels = Challenging a Catholic Dream

The historic importance of Brussels in recent European history deepens the tragedy of this week’s attacks.

During my junior year abroad as a political science major, one of my courses at the University of Paris’ Institute of Political Studies was a seminar in energy policies of the Common Market. In those days (1969!) “Common Market” referred to the six-nation cooperative that later expanded into the European Economic Community (EEC), and finally into today’s European Union (EU).

The highlight of the term was a field trip to Common Market Headquarters in Brussels. For 4 days, our seminar group participated in working conferences with Common Market diplomats discussing the future direction of the Common Market.  (In those days, simultaneous translation was available in French, Italian, Dutch, and German--but not English, since Great Britain had not yet joined the Market.)

On the final day of the conference we finished with a lavish lunch that reinforced our impression that our hosts were intent on recruiting as many of our seminar members as possible for the work of international diplomacy.  My classmates knew that I was the exception, since I would be returning to the United States at the end of the year.  Nonetheless, they wanted to know what I thought of the entire gathering.  My response was that I hoped, if I returned in 25 years, I would find a new “United States of Europe” waiting for me.  This pleased everyone, since it was exactly what they were hoping for as well.

In the nearly 50 years since then, what was the Common Market has expanded to more than 25 countries, continues to expand, has added political institutions like the European Parliament,  opened the borders among all its member countries, and even established the Euro as a common currency among most of them.  And through all this time, Brussels has remained the capital of the New Europe.

 But behind this history is a vision that was driven by Catholic leaders whose dream, while it has come very close to fulfillment, is now being jeopardized by the terror movements that surfaced once again this week—precisely in Brussels.

The Common Market started with something called the Schuman plan in the years after World War II.  Its chief architect was Jean Monnet, a Frenchman who represented an entire class of socially elite Europeans who belonged to Christian Democratic parties and espoused a world view rooted in Catholic “Personalism.”

The theology of personalism looked beyond the national identities dividing people to focus on the people themselves. It called for the reconciliation of former enemies, the reduction of animosities and divisions among European countries, and the creation of a transnational community that could end the long history of European warfare and provide the basis for both peace and prosperity.

Their notion was that European nations, tired of long generations of war, would be willing to sacrifice some of their national sovereignty and independence for a more interdependent federation that would end up looking something like the United States of America.

Their agenda was gradual and progressive.  They intended to begin with free trade agreements leading to an economic union, which in turn would gradually encourage nations to form a political federation.  When I visited the headquarters in 1969, things like a common currency, a European parliament, and open borders were far away--but they were part of the vision from the start.

It may be difficult for Americans to appreciate what Europe has accomplished.  Most Americans I meet have no idea that the European Union is a clear imitation of the experience in American history of moving from three distinct colonies, to 13 loosely federated states, to a unified republic of states under the U.S. Constitution.  And while the media consistently describes contemporary China as the world’s #2 economy after the U.S., the fact is that by most standards the EU is a bigger economy than China.

But now, as refugees pressure the eastern borders of Europe, as the open borders within Europe allow radicals to move freely, and as security forces prove incapable of preventing further attacks, the common wisdom is that Europe’s experiment may be in jeopardy.  Perhaps the open borders will be lost.  Perhaps the single currency will soon be gone.  Perhaps the vision of a unified Europe will not survive terror.

Brussels remains at the center of that vision.  It is not only the headquarters of the European Union’s daily operations, is also the where NATO has located its Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) since 1967.  In short, this small country finds itself the host of the major institutions that make the Catholic dream of a united Europe a reality.

But ironically, it is precisely in this small country that we see the critical flaw in that original dream.

Observers on the scene have been informing us that the neighborhood recently raided by intelligence and security forces, the same neighborhood where the newest assailants lived, is a kind of isolated, “no go” Muslim ghetto within Brussels, capable of harboring fugitives and providing a home base for planning terrorist attacks.

Such neighborhoods exist in many major cities in many countries, and are almost always the result of the failure to integrate newcomers into the general mainstream of the population.  And it is no surprise that this has been especially difficult to do in Belgium, a country which has not even succeeded in unifying its own people.

Belgium has long been torn between the Flemish and the Walloons--that is, the Dutch-speaking and French-speaking.  It has it is as though Belgian has been caught cultural and between France and the Netherlands, and never resolved its identity.  With such a fissure in the main population, it is no surprise that the Muslim community has fallen through the cracks.

But there is a deeper tragedy in this fact.  The Christian democratic parties that founded the vision of a common Europe on Catholic personalism came from the elite classes of France, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Italy.  These elites assumed not only that it was the responsibility of the educated elite to forge the continent’s future--they also assumed that the continent’s future depended on its Christian identity.  In other words, the vision behind the European Union was a vision of Christian culture dominating the continent.

No surprise, then, that the influx of Muslims into Europe has been consistently out of sync with the progression of the European Union.  Just as many conservative Americans cling to the myth of the Christian nation in the United States, many of the governing class behind the European Union have clung to the myth of a Christian Europe. 

The explicit endorsement of Christianity has disappeared from EU documents, to be sure, in the interest of the secularized cultures that have emerged since World War II.  But the founding vision has never been quite prepared for the pluralism that Europe has witnessed in the wake of the end of colonialism.  As populations have flooded into Europe from North Africa and the Middle East, Europe has been consistently caught off guard.  And this week’s attacks have revealed that the very city which has become the heart of the European Union has been perhaps the least prepared to broaden the vision that would keep that union alive. It has become home to the vision of United Europe, but has failed to become home to its newest peoples.

The lesson, for both Europe, and for America, is not to hold back the movement of new peoples.  That strategy would be little more than a finger in the dike of global migration.  Rather, the lesson, the moral of the story, is that we must learn better than ever how to welcome and integrate new peoples, adapting our vision of the future so that these people, rather than radicalizing into dangerous attackers, develop a sense of ownership and investment in the vision itself.

Ironically, the EU’s founding Catholic vision of a peaceful Europe will only work if it opens beyond Catholicism, and even beyond Christianity.

Nothing could be clearer about this week’s attacks than this: the attackers felt no stake in the status quo, and had nothing to lose by attacking it.  And nothing is more common sense than this: the survival of our hopes for the future--for the kind of life we would lead, and for the kind of world we want--all that depends on creating for such people a stake in our way of life.  Only when they have everything to gain by joining us, and everything to lose by attacking us, will the threat recede and civility return to our life.

But for both Europe and America, this means abandoning the destructive myth of a culture dominated by Christians, and accepting that the global future--and in all probability the providential will of God--calls for a single human family learning to inhabit, in civility and peace, what Pope Francis has called “Our Common Home.”

   © Bernard F. Swain PhD 2016