What’s Behind the Neoconservative Attacks on Europe?

I have been saying for some time that when the US neoconservative pundits criticize Europe they are really attacking progressive liberals in America.  One recent article in the Weekly Standard labeled US liberals "Euro-Americans". One key motivation to the neoconservative assault on Europe is the dream of dismantling America’s already inadequate social safety net.  This is apparent in the current efforts to phase out Social Security , one of the most successful programs that has eliminated poverty for generations of older Americans. Other initiatives are the defunding of Medicaid, elimination of the estate tax, impoverishing public schools, reversing environmental protection laws . – the examples are too numerous to list here.  The champion of neoconservative tax policy, Grover Norquist, has been very blunt about his goal to "shrink government down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub." Elsewhere he compared the plight of wealthy Americans and their tax burden to Jewish victims of the holocaust. 

The recent electoral setbacks to ratifying the EU constitution has only instensified the attacks on Europe and American liberals.  The latest salvo comes courtesy of David Brooks in his New York TImes op/ed piece:

Forgive me for making a blunt and obvious point, but events in
Western Europe are slowly discrediting large swaths of American
liberalism.

Most of the policy ideas advocated by American
liberals have already been enacted in Europe: generous welfare
measures, ample labor protections, highly progressive tax rates,
single-payer health care systems, zoning restrictions to limit big
retailers, and cradle-to-grave middle-class subsidies supporting
everything from child care to pension security. And yet far from
thriving, continental Europe has endured a lost decade of relative
decline.

This kind of sweeping indictment of Europe fails to recognize regional differences in European economic  performance.  Why is unemployment lower in Scandinavian countries , which has the most generous social benefits package on the continent?  Why is the UK economy growing at a healthy clip even though it offers many of the programs David Brooks condemns?  Is the fact that nearly 50 million Americans currently do not have health insurance really the key to our future economic prosperity?  Watch closely as the conservative media in America steps up its criticism of Europe.  The real targets are the forces for progressive change in the US.