Rifkin's European dream

I received a card in the mail today inviting me, as a college professor, to consider adopting a new Tarcher/Penguin edition of Jeremy Rifkin's The European Dream: How Europe's Vision of the Future Is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream for use in my college classes. At the bottom of the card was written:

"Send an email to europeandream@foet.org or write to the Foundation on Economic Trends, 4520 East West Highway, Suite 600, Bethesda, MD 20814. Please be sure to include the following: the course the book is being considered for, your name, department and university mailing address."

I've read some of Rifkin's other books before, like Entropy: A New World View, which I found interesting, if not convincing. But I hadn't even read a review about this book. Here's what the publisher's promotion said on the card:

While the American Dream is fading, says the best-selling author Jeremy Rifkin, a powerful new European Dream is beginning to emerge. With its 25 member states and 455 million citizens, the European Union is now the world's leading exporter and largest internet trading market, with a GDP comparable to the United States, making it a rival economic superpower on the world stage. Moreover, much of Europe enjoys a longer life span and greater literacy, and has less poverty and crime, less blight and sprawl, longer vacations, and shorter commutes to work than we do in the United States. Although Rifkin cautions that Europe is plagued with problems, he believes that the European Dream may ultimately prove to be a better vision for a globalizing world.

"European Dream ..." "Globalizing world ..." Hmmmm ... The publishers add the following two blerbs:

"Rifkin makes a compelling case for [the European] vision, which he says is usurping the American Dream as a global ideal...a fascinating study of the differences between the American and European psyches." -- Business Week

"Rifkin's book is deeply thought-provoking and optimistic about the future state of the world we live in...At a time when many Americans are feeling increasingly isolated, Rifkin carves out a provocative window for self-reflection and appraisal." --San Francisco Chronicle

The Internet website for The Foundation of Economic Trends, which promotes Rifkin's work, has a similarly dreamy and utopian description of Rifkin's European dream. A few excerpts:

The American Dream is becoming ever more elusive. Americans are increasingly overworked, underpaid, squeezed for time, and unsure about their prospects for a better life. One third of all Americans say they no longer even believe in the American Dream.

While the American Dream is languishing, says bestselling author Jeremy Rifkin, a new European Dream is capturing the attention and imagination of the world. Twenty-five nations, representing 455 million people, have joined together to create a United States of Europe.

The European Union's $10.5 trillion GDP now eclipses the United States', making it the largest economy in the world.... More important, Europe has become a giant laboratory for rethinking humanity's future. In many respects, the European Dream is the mirror opposite of the American Dream. While the American Dream emphasizes unrestrained economic growth, personal wealth, and the pursuit of individual self-interest, the European Dream focuses more on sustainable development, quality of life, and the nurturing of community.

Rifkin is certainly right in highlighting the fact the the EU is far more than a fancy European version of NAFTA that many Americans take it for. While I have some acquaintance with how precarious the venture has been from its inception, particularly from my personal acquaintance with one of the MPs at the EU headquarters in Brussells, it is still probably the boldest political experiment in the Western world since the American experiment of 1776. Rifkin is probably also right in pointing out that, contrary to prevailing American opinion, Europe is ahead of the U.S. in its implimentation of certain wireless technologies, and certainly in its quality and pace of urban life, attitude towards leisure, etc.

But as Radek Sikorski writes in his review, a "Socialist Dream,":

None of this, however, justifies Rifkin's tone of rapture, bordering on puppy infatuation, toward the E.U. Permit me to psychologize: This is a love letter from an American social-democrat who is so disappointed with his irredeemably reactionary homeland that he is willing to tout a risky political experiment on another continent just to bolster his ideological points back home.

Sikorski also points out that Rifkin makes factual errors, like claiming that Europeans "enjoy a common E.U. passport," which is not true: hold national passports that conform to an E.U. standard. Further, while the E.U. clearly boasts some impressive claims, what is truly odd is Rifkin's penchant for praising some of the nuttiest aspects of the E.U. For example, Rifkin writes: "There are still other rights that do not exist in our U.S. Constitution. For example, the E.U. Constitution grants everyone the right of access to a free placement service." Sikorski asks: "What's next in Europe, the Constitutional right to an Internet dating service?" Continuing, he sums up:

There is a lot of hocus-pocus here that sounds like a re-hash of Rifkin's earlier book The End of Work... The European Dream is more an ideological projection of the author's own prejudices than a serious analysis of how Europeans and Americans address similar challenges. By its own criteria, Europe is failing to modernize its economy, and more socialism a la Rifkin, however cleverly argued, will not lurch it forward.

As long as people continue to vote with their feet for the American Dream, his call to swap it for the Euro version is unlikely to persuade.