"I love Europe and I'm voting no."

Perhaps no slogan better summed up the sentiments of the young Parisians I met on the day of the historic vote against the EU Constitution than this simple argument, plastered on kiosks and walls across Paris next to innumerable debate announcements and choice quotations from the two hundred plus page Draft.

While Americans redebate evolution, Europeans are hashing out one of the most important political documents of the twenty-first century. Public postering is illegal in most American cities (unless it's for profit); in Paris the "Oui" and "Non" flyers covering almost every available bit of wall signaled how seriously people took their obligation to decide their collective future.

Yet as I watched the results unfold a few blocks from the Bastille on May 29, it was increasingly clear that for all the debate's intensity, most mainstream commentators couldn't understand how people could rationally vote no. Pundits accused "fantastical France" of favoring a "Soviet economy" to the neoliberal alternative offered by the Constitution, of wanting to "turn back the clock," of "turning against the modern world."

And then there were the American commentators, who argued in even nastier fashion that the vote demonstrated a "reflexive loathing of the United States as the source of all evil," and of "ceaselessly indulg[ing] in infantile anti-market rhetoric."

Clearly, to the Constitution's supporters there could be no rational reason for a rewrite. But having just finished my third book this year, I don't know what the fuss is about. The EU constitution is still a "draft;" apparently, like the draft of each of my books, it's going to need quite a bit of editing before it's ready to be "published." From this perspective, French and Dutch voters—the Constitution's rightful editors—are just doing their job: letting the authors know that it's too long, too complicated and strays too far from the highest ideals of Europe to be acceptable in its current form.

As young first-time voters in the middle-class, artsy 11th arrondissement neighborhood where I was staying proudly announced their (technically secret) vote before dropping it into the carton, they little resembled the combination of far Right and Left immigrant-fearing luddites with no understanding of the complexities of the globalized world portrayed by "Oui" supporters. Rather they were concerned, quite simply, that a yes vote would bring about the gutting of France's vaunted social safety net—one of the singular achievements of post-War Europe—at precisely the moment that global integration threatens to make their economic lives more precarious than ever before.

Most French understand that the country's standard of living and wealth have increased steadily as it has integrated into the world economy in the last two decades. But so has unemployment and inercommunal hostility. And the millions who participated in heated debates on the Constitution seem much more aware than the average American about how, along with unprecedented wealth, two decades of neoliberalism has brought unprecedented inequality, increasing poverty, a hyper-consumerist culture that runs roughshod over well-tested social practices, and a class system that is more rigid than any time in recent memory.

Yet despite its problems, France (like the Netherlands) has managed to increase its level of human development more than the United States, while its GDP has remained higher than the European average. And both of these feats were achieved without rending the social compact that once operated in the US and still, however fragile, defines the French and Dutch societies. Picking up on the slogan of the "alter-globalization" movement, what many French voters were saying is that "another Europe is possible" than the overly-bureaucratized, liberalized and walmartized version drafted by the Constitution's authors.

In this vision they are joined by the thousands of heavy metal and hiphop fans at the "Festival of Young Musicians" I attended in Casablanca days after the vote. It may be hard for Americans to picture Muslims playing heavy metal or punk; but as one leading artist explained to me, "We play heavy metal because our lives are heavy metal."

Not surprisingly, as the festival proceeded a friend with strong ties to the country's main religious movement lamented the latest violent Government crackdown against protesters in the Western Sahara, which will further pack the country's lethally overcrowded jails with political prisoners. But in this key American ally in the war on terror, a 2003 Terrorism Law effectively prohibits newspapers or activists from disagreeing with any Government policy.

Unable to poster or publicly debate their country's future and the impact of the Government's (largely ineffectual) liberalization programs on ordinary citizens, young and increasingly cosmopolitan--and out of work--Moroccans look toward Europe, Islam, heavy metal or some combination of the three to imagine another world, one that lives up to the ideals French and Dutch voters so vociferously debated. To stop them the government blends old-fashioned repression with attempts to coopt, or at least distract, Morocco's exploding youth culture by sponsoring home-grown versions of "American Idol" and even Christian Heavy Metal festivals organized by American evangelicals tied to the Bush Administration.

As I checked into my Paris-Casablanca flight a couple of businessmen lamented the defeat of corporate power represented by the no vote as they sped through first class check-in on their way to the Air France "Petroleum Club" lounge. They are probably right to do so; for in its wake activists across Europe and the its neighboring regions will continue forging their own interconnections as they work to resist political and economic systems in which they have little stake and imagine ones in which they do. In that sense, if the newspaper Liberation argued that "the no is neither right nor left, it is very fragile," the "other world" that is inspiring young activists on both sides of the Mediterranean is a strong foundation for the democratic and just future Europe's leaders were once unafraid to dream of.