Unlike some other Democrats, Bernie Sanders has never made any bones about his desire to turn the United States into a European welfare state – even as socialists in Europe turn their backs on the policies Sanders is proposing, and countries like Greece are paying the piper for their ridiculously generous social programs.  One of the hallmarks of the European model is overregulation, and France (one of the left’s favorite countries) has provided yet another example of legislative zealotry in the ongoing fight over glyphosate, the herbicide/pesticide used in America and around the world for decades.

Last year, the France-based International Agency of Research into Cancer, or IARC – the same people who told us bacon and hot dogs would give us cancer – took aim at glyphosate and classified it as “probably carcinogenic.”  For reference, IARC also considers working as a pilot or a nurse cancer-causing.  The only problem?  IARC’s finding flies in the face of just about every other study that has been done on glyphosate.  Just this past week, a joint panel of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) – both U.N. bodies, like IARC – disputed that by declaring it was “unlikely” that glyphosate posed any cancer risk to humans and also said there was little likelihood of its being genotoxic (or damaging to cells and their genetic material).  In America, glyphosate has been approved for use for decades.  Looking at the EPA’s newest report (which was put up on their website and then mysteriously pulled down), that doesn’t seem likely to change any time soon.

That hasn’t stopped France’s ruling Socialists, though.  With the European Union set to decide on reapproving the substance by the end of June, French environment minister Ségolène Royal has seemingly made it her mission to get glyphosate banned and has been trying to do so in France since last year.

Even within Europe, France’s extreme stance seems to be beyond the pale.  Of the 28 countries in the European Union, 19 favor renewing glyphosate’s approval, and five are undecided.  Considering the very real need farmers and gardeners both have for effective weed and pest control, it’s not clear what Royal and her allies plan on replacing glyphosate with.  When it comes to harmful chemicals, the homemade white vinegar solution preferred by some of those speaking out against glyphosate is actually more toxic.

The strongly anti-industry stance taken by these left-wing French government officials meshes closely with how liberals in the U.S. tend to approach corporations and private enterprise in general, and this worldview has been one of the building blocks for the Sanders campaign since it got off the ground.  In his stump speeches, Bernie constantly refers to the “big banks,” “Wall Street,” and “special interests” as boogeymen he would have the government cut down to size – except, as the New York Daily News found out, he doesn’t actually know how he would do that.  This preference for conspiracy theories and unfounded hostility toward private companies should hardly be surprising, considering how much time both the socialist senator and his young voters spend blaming business, the financial system, and seemingly capitalism itself for the government not giving them everything they want for free.

Looking at how far Bernie’s socialist “revolution” has gotten closer to home, it’s clear that a large swath of the Democrats have an appetite for this nanny-state approach to agriculture, health care, education, and just about everything else.  They can keep pointing to Europe to justify their ideas, but both the candidate and his supporters would do well to remember the real lessons from Europe’s leftward turn.

As Jeff Jacoby explained in the Boston Globe last year, the world-leading quality of life achieved by Sweden was the result not of socialism, but instead the free-market policies pursued in Sweden from 1870 to the late 1960s.  As the socialist policies instituted since erode national wealth and bring about welfare dependency, Nordic publics have started turning away from the platforms they pioneered and turned back to the center-right.

From industry to social services, Europe’s penchant for overregulation and arbitrary state interventions has helped produce stagnant growth and, by extension, the rise of populist extremists.  When Americans can get a perfectly good look at how these policy mistakes have turned out, why do the Democrats think we should repeat them?