John Tamny of Forbes is a super-smart guy, and one with whom I want to agree on the question of American statism and its future. But I am not convinced. Tamny argues that the United States is not going down the road to Euro-statism (ultimately, the road to serfdom) because: Americans aren’t like Europeans. He writes:

In short, we’ll never be Europe because we’re too entrepreneurial to be Europe. While many across the pond are happy with the status quo … restless Americans in many instances want more than the status quo.

Maybe. I hope so. But as Mark Steyn has argued, persuasively, the state shapes the people even as the people shape the state. People get used to being nannied. Tamny writes:

What this tells us–and perhaps this explains why the markets have been moving up over the past year–is that Americans have been exposed to big government and they don’t like it.

That’s where he loses me: Americans love Big Government. But it’s not a blind love — it all depends on the direction the arrow is pointing on the cashflow chart. Ask George W. Bush, who got himself crucified for trying to reform Social Security. Ask anybody who has touched Medicare, or even idly thought aloud about doing so. Ask a farmer or anybody marching in the Small Business Administration pork parade.

Steyn’s fear, which I share, is that Americans, like the British before us, will become used to government-run health care, will consequently come to fear the uncertainties of a market-based system and — above all — will come to dread the need for be personally responsible for their own health care. Tamny’s take does not account for how a giant new entitlement can change the character of the American people. He is correct, I think, that today’s Americans are very different from today’s Europeans. But today’s Europeans are very different from their recent forebears.

I’d love to hear Tamny and Steyn duke this one out.