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VDH always touches the intriguing issues of the day. The roots of this gulf would make an excellent research paper, if not an entire book. Are they the result of the inevitable cultural dispersion? Are they an evolutionary manifestation? Will the increasing cultural difference create competition and stresses, or will all cultures eventually move in the same direction, just at different speeds? Those kinds of pressures are what shapes our future, and the future our sons and daughters will know.

VDH is a classic essayist of a sort we haven't had in a long time. This guy takes age-old themes culled from 2,000 years of reocrded history, and relates them to modern American issues in a way that is informative but never condescending. Great stuff.

I'm constantly reminded of an ancient Chinese proverb "When the geese are gone, the bows are stored; when the cunning hares are dead, the hunting dog is killed." i.e. when something outlasts its usefulness it is put aside.

Europe is a very rationalistic and scheming lot. The wanted Americans after WWII because the big bad Soviet wolf was there. Charles de Gaulle wanted Americans out in the 1960s because he figured the united European Economic Community already had enough force on their own to dispel the Soviet Union as opposed to the weak post-WWII years when Western Europe was in ruin. De Gaulle also betted that Brenshev was no Stalin and he was not interested to really conquer Western Europe. But the majority thought Uncle Sam should stay for a while because they weren't sure of the Soviet's power.

Fast forward to the 1990s. The Soviet Union is gone, which makes Europeans think they don't need you anymore - I saw them openly said so on European forums long before anyone know who Dubya is. The WOT essentially don't change anything because they figure Muslims are targeting the United States and a couple of countries closest to you, like Australia for instance, and not the entire West.

All of this shows that the Cold War alliance was just an alliance of convenience. When there is no common interests, it is natural for the alliance to wither away.

Since the immigration door was slammed shut in 1921, the most recent immigrants have been assimilated and are now American. Prohibition was the last attempt to drive a wedge between the old population and the recent immigrants, who still had strong ties to Old Europe. All that is over.

The recent spate of illegal immigration is mild in comparison, since the newest immigrants are from nearby and are already American. There is a legitimate question about Moslem immigrants due to the state of war, but probably not as big a question as about German immigrants during WW I and Japanese immigrants during WW II.

There could be several books in this depending on emphasis.