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"No one is going to dictate our culture, or with whom we can strike agreements."That is Mark Carney in Strasbourg on September 17, after he addressed the European Parliament.Carney went to the EU begging for trade deals. He claimed the United States will not tell him what to do or who he can make deals with.Ursula von der Leyen welcomed him into the fold. She floated making Canada the EU's first associate member. They clapped.The joke is on him.Most of the EU is in the same boat. Those countries are financially dependent on the United States for defense and trade.The United States still carries about 60 percent of NATO's defense spending. Europe built its welfare states under that umbrella.Because the U.S. carried so much of the burden, most of these countries went down the democrat socialist path.Italy's debt sits near 139 percent of its economy. France is over 117 percent. Greece is still over 143 percent. Five EU countries now owe more than their entire annual output.They are on the brink of bankruptcy. And they are cheering a Canadian prime minister for pretending he can unplug from the American market.They want the American shield and the American customer while they lecture Washington about sovereignty. That is not a partnership. That is a free ride.You cannot clap your way out of a security bill the United States has been paying for decades. You cannot replace American demand with speeches in Strasbourg.Carney can call it a new era of economic independence. The countries he is courting cannot cover the hole he is opening.Independence that depends on someone else's army and someone else's customers is not independence.