Replies

Most Americans admire Europe's cultivated lifestyle, public transportation and sophisticated take on world affairs. But they are puzzled as to why Europeans — well before the election of Bush — seemed to have defined themselves as the anti-United States.

VDH is being nice here - and inaccurate. At this point in history most Americans who know anything about it are wondering just how badly the Europeans will screw up the incredible historical opportunity they were handed, and why. I agree with him, though, in that it's time for a little disengagement.

That does not address the issue at hand, which is the realization by the American public after 9/11 of the magnitude and universality of the anti-American rhetoric in the continent, its venality, mendacity, and reverence for the comfortable lie. The sneering, unreasoning contempt in which the United States is held by the high majority of European intellectuals, politicians, cultural critics, media figures, and nearly anyone with more microphone than brain is simply overwhelming. That part of Europe is not worth saving and will not be missed.

You know there's something wrong with Britain and Europe when you see routine denouncement of "American imperialism and world haegemony" by students attending the Imperial College, or politicians with titles such as OBE (Order of the British Empire), and when they sneer at the American Christians and the seemingly unsecular approach to things when, hello, there is one big Church of England as an established church.

I have seen isolated instances of some British FRers on this board who attempt to accuse that Americans want to build an empire around the world and it is bad for the world, only then turn around and defend the Empire of which the sun never set which was built by their great-great-grandfathers. Schizophrenia.

"Most Americans admire Europe's cultivated lifestyle, public transportation and sophisticated take on world affairs. But they are puzzled as to why Europeans — well before the election of Bush — seemed to have defined themselves as the anti-United States."

VDH is being nice here - and inaccurate. At this point in history most Americans who know anything about it are wondering just how badly the Europeans will screw up the incredible historical opportunity they were handed, and why. I agree with him, though, in that it's time for a little disengagement.

From an historical point of view the Europeans have been a war culture for at least 2,000 years. If you want to count Alexander the Macedon and the early Roman era, the Europeans have been fighting 'civilized' wars for about 2,250 years. What exists as a present day European citizen, is the end result of warring cultures mixing on the continent for over 2,000 years. Europeans have achieved numerous advances in the science and the arts, but at the end of The European 2,000 Year Reich, one must begin to question, at just what price ?