The NYT’s young Berlin bureau chief, Nicholas Kulish, sees a connection between Germany’s refusal to pony up stimulus funds in proporition to the U.S. with a red line guarding a “barefoot zone” beyond which no shoes my trod. Everyone strictly obeys the line and grown men freeze in place when they see it, demonstrating a voluntary policing of the type you wouldn’t likely see in Paris, let alone Rome. This collective sense of Ordung above all else is familiar to any non-German who has watched, baffled, as pedestrians line up at a red cross walk light without a car in sight (though I would note this is not always the case in Berlin’s more rebellious corners). Still, the impulse, yay desire, to obey rules in Germany is strong. A great many English idioms have close German equivalents; “rules are meant to be broken” has no German counterpart. OK, actually it does: Regeln sind dazu da gebrochen zu werden, the superb German-English dictionary www.dict.cc tells me. So, forget that last point. My point is one that any expat would happily confirm: Germans like to follow the rules and if there are no rules they will be quick to invent some to follow. So goes the common wisdom.

The fact is, though, this is caricature and a tired caricature at that. For every German who wouldn’t dare cheat on his taxes, I can show you one who has made tax evasion an art form (let alone running off to Switzerland, as Kulish mentions). If there is such a strong desire for order, could someone please tell me why Germans are completly incapable of forming a simple single file line, ever? What’s so orderly about all the sidewalk dog crap?—something I don’t complain about but plenty of folks do. And on the government level, America’s essentially two-party system looks practically monolithic compared to the chaotic jumble of Germany’s multi-party coalition makers.

I always enjoy Mr. Kulish’s writing and his insights on Germany, but he is wide of the mark here in trying to locate something in the German character that would make them averse to breaking the “rule” of fiscal discipline. For one thing, Germany’s economy is export-driven rather than domestic consumer-driven (like the U.S.) and increasing spending would not have have close to the same impact that it would in the United States. Further, there is the European safety net, the so-called social market economy, that (American) conservatives love to demonize as socialism, the gateway drug to communism, which every American knows is on the same page as Satanism and caniballism in terms of evil. This system is now in global downturn is acting as a sort of built-in stimulus in Germany and throughout Europe, one that has kept unemployment from rocketing upward like it has stateside where the country’s economic growth is much more closely connected to the well-being of its citizens. There are strong philosophical differences between the U.S. and Europe, many of which are now coming to light in interesting ways with the world economic tide coming in. In this zero sum game, Americans can dismiss German resistance to spend as a collective obsessive compulsive disorder, but to do that they’ll have to accept their American label as mindless spenders.

Stumble it!