Stardate 20020520.1137

(On Screen): Every once in a while I encounter some list of developmental stages. There will be a sequence of anything from three to ten stages of something, with each stage representing progressively greater sophistication and desirability. There are certain things these lists have in common.

First, it's always a ladder, always a linear sequence with no branching points. Second, the person constructing the list invariably belongs to the topmost rung. One soon comes to realize that there is an agenda here: "Listen to me, be like I am, and you too can be as cool as I am."

We got another one, sent in by reader Richard. OK, it's the Guardian. Which means that it's arrogant, insufferably smug, and absolutely convinced that the United States has no redeeming features. That's a foregone conclusion. Still, it's worthy of note:

These policy differences are now too wide to be dismissed as part of the normal give and take of transatlantic diplomacy. They arise, instead, from fundamental differences of philosophical outlook. The essential problem was highlighted by Robert Cooper, one of Tony Blair's favourite foreign policy advisers. The world, he said, comprised pre-modern states too weak to enforce the rule of law; modern states pursuing their national interests in the classic 19th-century sense; and postmodern states which reject power politics in favour of integration and systems of mutual interference.

The implications are clear. Britain and the rest of the European union belong to the postmodern world. That is evident not only in the progress made towards political and economic integration in Europe but in the willingness of EU countries to solve wider global problems by limiting their sovereignty through binding agreements and the development of strong institutions.

Although Cooper does no more than hint at it, America equally clearly stands out as an archetypical modern state, determined to preserve its freedom of movement by limiting foreign commitments. Under George Bush, its approach to the international community assumes a more ostentatious form of rejectionism with every week.

We'll start by saying that anyone who uses the term "postmodern" with a straight face is already beneath intellectual contempt.

This reeks of European paternalism; it's the same message we've been getting from them for the last year: "Wait until you grow up; you'll see that we're right. You're young yet; when you mature you'll become like us." This particular American is fed up with hearing that, and I'm not the only one.

But that's not the limit to the arrogance here. There's also the underlying assumption that all nations actually follow, and should follow, the same path of advancement, and Europe quite naturally leads the world in this regard.

Missing is any recognition that there may be more than one answer, that the process of advancement might be a tree and not a ladder.

Also missing is any idea that maybe, just maybe, the US might have a better idea.

Yes, the US is following a different path than the UK and the rest of Europe. But that doesn't mean we're more primitive or less advanced. There definitely is a difference of philosophy. But it isn't one that we're going to grow out of.

The fundamental European philosophy of government is that power should be concentrated unless it cannot be. Power is held in the center, and doled out on an as-needed basis. At the other extreme, the American idea is that power should be dispersed as much as possible, concentrated as little as necessary. That was the fundamental principle on which the Constitution of the United States was based.

No national charter until just recently contained as many restrictions on the power of the Government as the US Constitution. (Not even the Magna Carta.) And once it was ratified, they immediately passed ten amendments which restricted the power of government even more.

Europeans have always tried to concentrate power. Everyone important in Europe has always agreed about this. The only argument has been who, exactly, would be the ones to wield that power. Europe has spent the last thousand years fighting bloody and inconclusive wars to try to decide that minor detail. Both World Wars began in Europe because of that. Now, with tentative steps towards formation of the European Union, that dream of complete centralization of power is finally being realized.

The EU is not a revolution. It is not something new. It is the culmination of the last thousand years of European politics. It is the fulfillment of the dream of Charlemagne, not to mention the Hapsburgs, Napoleon, Stalin and numerous others.

Of course, Europeans didn't just spend that thousand years fighting to rule each other; they also spent it trying to rule everyone else in the world. For several hundred years they almost succeeded by force of arms, but that all started to fall apart about 70 years ago, and the Europeans were largely out of the empire business by 30 years ago.

European "international multilateralism" is nothing more than traditional European imperialism with a paint job. The old European empires were created with muskets and cannons. The new European empire will be created with treaties. But the world will still be ruled from Europe, like it ought to be.

The recent complaints about American "unilateralism" come down to this: The Europeans