I just showed you this Tookie Williams story to point out the completely different way of thinking between Europe and America. We do not have to discuss the rightfully desicion of your gouvernator. The simple thing is, that his former (or still - he has two citizenships to my knowlege) Austrian compatriots see him as a murderer, because he refused to stop a normal American judiciary process. The sad thing is, that they mean exactly what they are saying. Maybe this gives you a feeling how antithetic the values on both sides of the Atlantic are. These different attitudes are widely spread throughout whole Europe. It would have turned out to be the same for Arnie if he would have been born in London, Paris, Berlin or Brussels.
There was i.e. no possibility to do more on Hamadi for Germany than what has been done. Hamadi was longer behind bars than most other offenders (who convicted even much worser crimes than him). Since we have a law that no one can be extradited as a result of a crime he already "atoned" in Germany (unregarding the capital punishment issue), any German "help" would have been highly illegal. In a democratic country you have to obey the law or you turn yourself into a criminal very fast.
It is possible that Europe and America will loose each other since there is indeed no real foundation anymore. This is not only a problem between Germany and the US, this problem is between all western European nations and the US. If you come to the UK, your by far closest ally, you better not talk about your sympathy of your own administration for example. In the moment we have some reasonable politicians like Merkel, Sarkozy or Blair who try to ease the situation. This will not be that way forever. Since there are many issues were Europeans and Americans have totally different viewpoints that can't be by-passed, it would be helpful if we could find out what is connecting us. Both sides can't afford loosing their friends on the other shore. There are not only such fundamental interests like free trade, political stability or clear economic rules, we share our forefathers, our history and -guess what?- most of our values. Maybe we are mature enough to accept that some differences can make a friend even more interesting.
Perhaps not all. I do not think that Western Europe is nearly as monolithic in this as this statement presumes. But the current governments in Germany and France and Spain certainly seem to be.
I say this with sadness because I have the greatest respect for the civilization that gave us Goethe and Moliere and Cervantes, but I do not honestly believe that the rift is likely to be bridged. Western Europe has made its choice, and that is for comfort and senescence with an infuriating dollop of self-righteousness. I do not think it is widely appreciated in Europe how exquisitely disturbing this particular incident is - our media won't report it and European media certainly will not. And so it will fade in the public consciousness, and the rift will grow bit by bit silently, but it will grow.
The GDP of California is approximately ten times that of Austria. Not that we think about this every day, or that it is common knowledge. But the issue is that I think Austria has a different perspective of its importance to us. There are probably more Crips in LA than citizens in Graz.
We view Austrian insanity as an Austrian problem.
We are sorry Europe is turning into/has turned into a slow growth home of Socialism, for numerous reasons.
It is my expereince that you are inflating the extent of the Leftist nonsense in many of these countries. Most guys I work with over there are much more conservative, unfortuantlytheyfeel like "Massachusetts Conservatives" - that is 37% of that Left Wing state voted for Bush, yet are surrounded by a culture of weakness.
This situation may be a result of the "Pax Americana" Europe has been living under for 50 years - as an unintended consequence. Countries like Austria have not needed to be responsible for their own protection, leading to the development of this culture of weakness. We are fighting for Freedom. Austrian Leftists are fighting to rename a stadium in the name of a cold blooded murderer. We are not sure we want people like that for friends.
We have plenty of Americans who point out European values as those we should have here. In other words - we have enough enemies within our borders now, thank you.