As a member of European Parliament, Daniel Hannan has seen our future, and it isn’t pretty.
The fiery British politician (and YouTube sensation) was at The Heritage Foundation last week to discuss his new book, “The New Road to Serfdom: A Letter of Warning to America” and to sound the alarm to Americans of the creeping European-style socialism that is gaining ground among our government.
Before his lecture, he sat down with us to discuss his warning to America and made clear that the core principles undergirding Western democracies are under siege:
You don’t have to look to far to see how those ideals are lost. In Britain because of the European Union and the rise of the bureaucracy at home we are losing those fundamental principles we fought our civil war for. Taxes are being levied without popular consent, directives are being passed without Parliamentary control, and a similar thing is happening here. You’re behind us on this road, fortunately from your point of view, but government by decree, trampling on state’s rights, appointment of federal czars, shift in power from elected representatives to the unelected functionaries, you’re doing the same thing. And we’re losing something very precious which, once gone, we will miss.”
But while Hannan’s warning was dire, it was not without some optimism. “The policies being pursued by this Administration all trend in that direction—European healthcare, European social security, European defense, European green taxes— but these things are reversible. … And from what I can tell looking at this country, you are doing something about it.”
