One common thread throughout the conservative freakouts after President Obama’s reelection is that America is over; that it will “go the way of the Europe” as a consequence. This Fox News conversation, between Steve Doocy and Mark Steyn, perfectly encapsulates the meme:

DOOCY: So is our country in a cultural decline? How do we turn it around? Let’s talk to columnist Mark Steyn. … Mark, once upon a time, you were born in Canada. But you decided that you wanted to head south, young man, to the land of opportunity. Now as it turns out, we’re not just opportunity, we’re entitlement.

STEYN: Yeah, that’s right. I’d heard about thing called the American Dream. They don’t really have a Canadian Dream or Belgian Dream or a Greek Dream. [Doocy laughs]. There was an American dream. I wanted a piece of it. Just as I got here, the United States decided to adopt the policies that have brought the rest of the Western world to ruin. When the takers are able to outvote the makers, you are a nation in steep decline.

Watch it:

This narrative, pervasive though it might be, badly misconstrues American politics and European history. Even setting aside the absurd takers/makers frame, Obama simply has not instituted staple European policies like a maximum work week, direct public provision of health care along the lines of the British National Health Service, or taxing top earners at roughly 50 percent. Even Obama’s hated spending increases didn’t bring us closer to a Greece-like budget crisis: too-low taxes, rather than too-high spending, explain why some European countries are budgetarily worse off than others today.

But even if Obama had attempted to replicate the European welfare state to a T, it wouldn’t be relevant: neither Europe’s current crisis nor “decline” in international power (in terms of military strength) were caused by Europe’s social safety net. The central reason that Europe isn’t as powerful internationally as it once was is, quite simply, one Great Depression and two World Wars. By the end of World War II, European states were virtually leveled and hence unable to function as global powers. As one RAND institute paper puts it, “[there were] 39 million deaths in Europe alone. Large amounts of physical capital were destroyed as well through six years of constant ground battles and bombing. … Periods of hunger become more common even in relatively prosperous Western Europe.” These economic aftershocks, together with the push for self-determination from previously colonized people, meant European states couldn’t sustain their prior model for global power. Europe decided to instead partner with the United States and gradually refocus its military efforts on defense rather than global reach.

One way to confirm this is to look at European military spending. Were it the welfare state that collapsed Europe’s international military might, then military spending should have declined gradually over the course of the late 40s to 70s, when various European welfare states were being constructed. Instead, Europe’s aggregate defense spending remained at roughly 3.1 percent of GDP until collapse of the Soviet Union, which caused a steep decline to about 1.7 percent in 2008. Thus, the rise of the welfare state didn’t trade off with European military might — it was the lack of a threat worth spending money on.

On Tuesday, Iran’s Intelligence Ministry released a report that mentions diplomacy and negotiations with foreign powers as a potential solution to the nuclear issue. The report, according to the Washington Post, suggests “that the ministry has a pragmatic understanding of the challenges the country faces, the cost it is paying for continuing uranium enrichment at current levels, the threat of Israeli aggression and, perhaps most important, a way out of the stalemate.”

In a surprising turn, it even recognizes President Obama’s efforts to find a diplomatic solution to the nuclear issue. The report’s release falls in the same week that Mohammad Javad Larijani, an influential Iranian official, said that it is “not taboo” to have negotiations with the U.S.

The report, according to the Post, cites diplomacy as the way to resolve the crisis:

“One of the options is to take diplomatic and political measures and use the potentials of international bodies, which is a necessary and less costly option.”

In the past few weeks, momentum toward a diplomatic solution between Iran and the U.S. has grown. The New York Times reported in October that the Obama administration had agreed “in principle” to direct negotiations with Iran. The two countries immediately denied the report. Israeli officials like Michael Oren, Israel’s ambassador to the U.S., came out publicly against the possibility of direct negotiations. Now, however, it seems there may be a different point of view in the Israeli government; Danny Ayalon, Israel’s deputy foreign minister, said yesterday that there “could be direct negotiations with Iran.” Other former high-level Israeli intelligence officials, including Efraim Halevy and Amos Yadlin, have endorsed this option.

Last week, Israeli and Iranian officials attended an academic conference in Brussels on nuclear issues; the mood, according to the Guardian’s account, “was described by one participant as ‘respectful and positive.’” Al-Monitor reported last week that Iran had picked a “central point of contact for approaches from outside-government Americans,” a potential “back-channel” route toward negotiations.

Iran’s Intelligence Ministry, which released the report, has had its share of controversy with Iranian leaders. In 2011, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad fired the head of the Intelligence Ministry, Heidar Moslehi. Soon after, Iran’s Supreme Leader rebuked Ahmadinejad and demanded Moslehi return to his position. Ahmadinejad’s squabble with the Supreme Leader laid the groundwork for a public criticism of his presidency from many members of Iran’s parliament. The criticism has grown and continues to this day. As a whole, the Intelligence Ministry, according to the U.S. Institute of Peace, is “at times cooperating and competing” with the powerful Iranian Revolutionary Guard, which has, according to USIP, “eclipsed the ministry of intelligence in scope and authority.” Indeed, the Post mentions that the ministry is “not a channel for expressing the Islamic republic’s foreign policy views.”

Ali Vaez, a senior Iran analyst at the International Crisis Group, said the Post “is reading too much” into the Iranian Intelligence Ministry’s report. He told ThinkProgress that “while the MOIS report provides a sober analysis of the current standoff, it doesn’t imply a different approach from the strategy Iran has been pursuing during the past decade.”

(Photo: Reuters)