This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, October 4, 2010.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Keeping the United States free and prosperous depends on not European

izing the economy, the health care system, and attitudes toward immigrants.

Daniel Hanen is a member of the European Parliament and author of the new book, The New Road

Diserftim.

He believes the cause of the United States, government and free markets is rightfully the cause of the world.

You talk about Europeanizing various aspects of policy in the United States and you make particular note of immigration.

What is Europeanizing immigration and what would that mean for the United States as you see it?

Well it's not so much the immigration, it's what you then do with the immigrants

that's being Europeanized the US has traditionally been incredibly successful at

assimilating settlers.

There was that wonderfully characteristically optimistic phrase of Ronald Reagan that every

immigrant makes America more American.

The country was set up to do that and it's done it very well. People very quickly shed their old

identities and become loyal and enthusiastic citizens of the New Republic. That hasn't happened recently in Europe. There's been massive post-war

immigration in Europe with nothing like the same degree of assimilation. And that

has to do not with the people who are arriving, but the society into which they arrive.

It's very easy to adopt the identity of a self-confident nation.

It's very easy to want to be part of a polity that feels confident about itself

and projects that optimism.

And you have that, to some some extent in the US.

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