I like the graphic. Designed by The Good Lobby, it offers a comparison of key indicators between EU and US. Metrics such as life expectancy, public debt, homicide rates, and student debt highlight superior outcomes under the EU model.

But less evident is the implicit normativity: the chosen metrics reflect a social-democratic worldview—prioritising redistribution, safety, and public welfare—while omitting others that might favour liberal or libertarian republicanism, such as innovation, GDP per capita, academic research output, or entrepreneurial dynamism.

From that standpoint, the US might claim superiority in:

Moreover, methodologically, the chart aggregates the EU into a single bloc, masking vast internal heterogeneity. The EU homicide rate of 2 per 100,000, for instance, hides extremes—from 0.5 in Luxembourg to over 5 in parts of Eastern Europe. By contrast, the US—despite being federal—may show more coherence in judicial, fiscal, and foreign policy systems. Mean-based comparisons obscure institutional divergence.

Rhetorically, the chart is of course polemic, not neutral analytic. The colour-coding (blue vs red), lack of error bars or confidence intervals, and moral framing favour narrative clarity over analytical precision. It is designed to evoke moral outrage, not facilitate comparative reasoning. Its implicit thesis is that the US model—understood as individualistic, deregulated, and market-centric—is failing on human flourishing; while the EU represents a moral high ground.

But that is misleading. We don’t need a simplistic civilisational scoreboard. The real question isn’t who’s “winning,” but how each bloc, within their respective means, advances—or obstructs—domestic and global justice.

On that score, neither bloc holds the moral high ground. In 2025–26, the EU guttled its flagship corporate due diligence law, signed arms deals with Israel during the Gaza war, escalated its outsourcing of asylum control to Libya and Tunisia, enabled illegal pushbacks at Greek borders, passed asylum reforms weakening protection standards, tolerated democratic backsliding in member states, and failed to enforce human rights at its own borders. The US, meanwhile, expanded executive power and surveillance, authorised home raids without judicial warrants, poured billions into militarised immigration enforcement, rolled back civil and reproductive rights, criminalised Palestinian solidarity, threatened independent legal professionals, and maintained Guantánamo and racialised police violence.

Neither are isolated failures. They are structural assaults on justice — national and global. Perhaps that is a more insightful takeaway.

#Leadership #GlobalJustice #GoodGovernance #HumanRights #MoralAmbition #humanrights