Roger Cohen s’inventa l’Eumerica. Un posto dove il caffe sarebbe italiano, i limiti di velocita tedeschi, il clima spagnolo, professori e aria condizionata americani, le rette scolastiche europee, la vodka polacca, la birra ceca e la cioccolata belga. Sport nazionali: calcio e baseball.
In Eumerica, a land boasting the bracing wide-open beaches of North America but also sun-baked coves reminiscent of the Mediterranean, a place where taxi drivers do not grumble and waiters do not speechify, a country where the cocktails are as good as the wine, there would not be an unemployment rate of over 10 percent, as there is in France and Germany. No, there would be full employment, or something close, because companies would be able to hire and fire as they do in the United States, and sophisticated capital markets would encourage innovation and risk, and nobody would be able to make more money from not working and getting benefits than from working, and the French 35-hour week and other silly regulations would be bad memories.
Realism would also lead Eumericans to accept that, in a dangerous world, a strong military is essential to maintain peace and the values of an open society for which they stand. As a last resort, and as far as possible in concert with their allies and international institutions, they would be ready to fight wars. They would scoff at notions of some postnationalist utopia spreading across the globe and rendering armies obsolete.
