Why Do Liberals Assume That "Be More Like Europe" Means "More Like Northern Europe?"

Obama's supporters say he wants to make the U.S. more like Europe, yet the examples you hear from liberals about why this is a good idea usually come from Northern European governments. Why do we assume that a bigger government in the U.S. would be more like the government of Norway than the government of Italy?

Italy's a wonderful place, but it's not really a showcase for Big Government.

For example, I ran a test in 1980: I sent my parents a postcard from downtown Rome on Tuesday and another postcard from Vatican City, a separate country about a mile away, on Wednesday. The Vatican City postcard arrived home about three weeks before the postcard I had entrusted to the Italian government for handling.

It's not exactly a secret that the Italians are lousy at government. They'll tell you that. In fact, quite a bit of the motivation for the creation of the Euro currency was that the Italians wanted to outsource management of their money supply to the Germans.