America and Europe: more alike than we think

America may be moving to the left under Obama; indeed, as Newsweek put it, Americans are "all socialists now" and due to become "even more French" in the decade to come. Despite this, it's still widely assumed, on both sides of the Atlantic, that Europe and America are essentially different—in their economies, societies and values. Americans have greater wealth inequality, pollute more and are much more religious, or so the logic goes.

This is a myth, argues Peter Baldwin—professor of history at UCLA and author of several books on the subject—in his essay for Prospect this month. It's a myth that has long been politically expedient to play on—in Europe, the purveyors of anti-Americanism in Europe know that nothing unites like a common enemy, especially as Europeans are unable to agree on anything else. Meanwhile, being "too European" is a stick Obama's right-wing opponents are fond of beating him with. But if one looks at the raw data on four key areas: the economy, social policy, the environment and—hardest of all to measure—religious and cultural attitudes, one sees, Baldwin says, that "Europe and the US are, in fact, parts of a common, big-tent grouping—call it the west, the Atlantic community, or the developed world."

More interesting still, if one removes the predominantly black urban underclass (dealt an atrociously bad hand by history and by the racism that prevails today) from the crime, poverty and education stastics, American and European societies become even more indistinct. As Europe assimilates more and more immigrants, this is something Europeans would do well to take note of…