Posted on 06/15/2008 9:30:13 AM PDT by WesternCulture
But, wait, that homogeneity is being challenged. What is happening in Malmo? what about the reports we read of Swedish women going out "in cover" because it's just easier?
Actually, I started life in Russia Studies many decades ago.
I think you might want to consider your relations with both Russia and China when China moves (more) of their population into Siberia. There are only about 7 million people in Siberia with the vast resources available. China will, one day, annex it.
Russia will have no choice but to defer. The only reason China has not is that Russia has nukes. That won’t be a deterent soon.
I don’t see defending Russia as a compelling problem for us. But, it might be for Europe.
“But, wait, that homogeneity is being challenged.”
Not according to WesternCulture:
“Islam has tried to conquer Europe for centuries. It has always failed.
Why do you think they’ll be successful this time round?
At least 90% of the Europeans reject Muslim teachings and many European Muslims hate the intolerant regimes they’ve fled from.”
I heard about the Malmo problem. Not even the Swedish police can enter the Muslim areas.
Incrementalism. That’s why I say Europe is dead. Italy is close to it. Between the Albanians and the rest of Muslims, it is becoming a mess.
Since the second World War, the US has always been willing to extend its hand to Europe, an acknowledgment of common civilization, political heritage and culture which has seldom been returned. To most Americans, Europeans simply aren't serious people. You talk the talk, but don't walk the walk. Look at just a couple of examples:
Europe has not made a proportional contribution to the Atlantic Alliance, ever; yet it was Europe that was most vulnerable to the threat of a conventional Soviet attack. In recent years, Europe's anemic commitment to the alliance has fallen even further. When America installed Pershing missiles in Europe in the 1980's the response was widespread anti-American demonstrations, despite the fact that this was a response, (not an initiative) against a Soviet deployment whose intention was to intimidate Europe, and despite the fact that placing Europe under the US nuclear umbrella had already committed the US to a suicide pact with Europe. Would any European country extend such existential protection to the US? I'll let you answer that question.
Europe is already cowed by the threat of Islamist violence. Take a look at Spain's response to the Madrid bombings. The Low Countries are already in an advanced state of dhimmitude, with politicians giving concessions to Islamsists and ejecting free thinkers from their countries even in the face of Muslim murders of politicians there. Throughout Europe there are speech codes that deny fundamental human rights: the way to combat hate-speech is with truth-speech, not censorship. (The Danes have been a rare exception to this cowardice.)
Europeans think, as they did under the threat of Nazi violence sixty years ago, that they can save themselves by giving up the Jews hiding in the attic. There is one -- one! -- democracy in the liberal western tradition in the entire Middle East, but Europeans consistently undermine Israel and give aid and comfort to her despotic and bloodthirsty enemies. I don't know what Europeans would do, but I know what the US would do if Mexicans were lobbing rockets into South Texas on a routine basis, or Canadians were sending suicide bombers into Detroit or Buffalo. Israel has acted with tremendous restraint, but European governments and European NGO's can find no good in the Jewish State.
The US has taken (so far) a hands-off approach to Iran and let Europe take the lead, but Europe's response to Iran is feckless and impotent. Once again, it is you who will fall under the nuclear threat of an atomic enemy first -- Iran has no missiles which can threaten the US -- and once again it is you who are failing to act.
Ignoring the question of whose side we should have been on in the small wars resulting from the disintegration of Yugoslavia, those conflicts are almost exclusively European problems. Yet Europe called on the US to act, and could not act itself, after months of slaughter.
Europeans are handing their sovereignty over to a group of unelected Bureaucrats in Brussels; are they really committed to the idea of self-government? Only one country has allowed a vote on the EU treaty, and that country rejected the "New Europe." The response in other European capitals to the Irish decision has not been, "let's find a framework which insures actual representation and democracy," but rather, "let's be sure we do not have plebiscites in any more countries, because we would lose there, too. i>Let's make sure we deny the right of self-determination to our own populations, and find ways to punish the Irish for exercising theirs. "
If you're not serious about self-government, how can the oldest democracy in the world take you seriously as a political partner?
The concept of human rights is fundamentally different (and misguided) in Europe. You think people have a right not to be offended, but the right to speak freely implies a right to offend. I'll give you just two other examples which have been a source of friction between Americans and Europeans on the question of basic rights, there are many more:
The right to keep and bear arms. It is a fundamental right of all human being to have the means to defend themselves. That defense includes not only defense against criminal violence, but also the threat of violence against us by our government. Our founders were revolutionaries against the most powerful -- and the most free -- government that existed on Earth at the time. But it wasn't free enough and they understood their right to overthrow it. It is a right we will never give up, and it is a right Europeans have allowed their governments -- for the most part -- to take away, in countries where it was ever recognized at all.
The International Criminal Court. Europeans think that American objections to this court are about American Supremacy. Nothing of the kind. American objections to this institution come from the fact in joining it Americans would give up fundamental rights guaranteed since the founding of our country and fundamental to our definition of humanity and of the role of government . The ICC allows, for example, "secret evidence" and "secret witnesses" to be presented against defendants. But the US Bill of Rights recognizes that an accused person has the right to be confronted by the evidence against him. American lawyers have to walk a difficult tightrope in terrorist and espionage cases in order to allow the defendant to see this evidence without revealing sources and methods. The ICC is a tribunal of professional judges. But no American can be held in jeopardy of life and limb except by a a jury of peers, and no fact decided by a jury can be overturned unless the defendant waives that right.
The ICC allows prosecution for crimes of "genocide" and "aggression," but these are not criminal acts except in an abstract sense, and there are no laws in any country against these abstractions per se. So how on earth can a person be accused of a "crime" concerning which there are no actual laws? This is nothing more than a recipe to prosecute people you don't like upon baseless charges. It makes the ICC a kangaroo court, and mocks the whole concept of law.
I could give many more examples, but you get the point. You call Americans "cowboys" because we fail to act, but your response to any crisis seems to be to either try to talk it to death or pretend it doesn't exist and hope that it will go away.
Finally, many of our cooperative efforts will fail because Europeans fail to understand that Americans are not simply Europeans who live on the other side of the Atlantic. This is especially difficult for British Europeans to understand because we speak a common language. There are different cultures in a different historical milieu which have come together here than those that shaped Europe, and most importantly, Americans of European descent are Europeans who left Europe behind. That introduces a selection bias in our populations that makes us fundamentally different from you. Even very recently naturalized American citizens from Europe are different from Europeans because they have chosen to become Americans, and they have chosen not to be Europeans. The poor, the homeless, the wretched, the oppressed, yes, even charlatans and criminals came here, but also the risk-takers, the adventurers, the entrepreneurs and the people who simply wanted to be free.
So that takes me to the conclusion. America is a place, with specially defined boundaries in space and time, geography and history. But America is more an idea, and the paradox is that while the stone under a country seems permanent and the ideas seem ephemeral and unreal, it is stone that changes ownership or that passes away, and it is ideas, like the first glimmers of democracy in Athens or Rome or Runnymede, which really last. For this reason, there are Americans all over the world and at all times in history, in a way that there are not Germans all over the world, or even Canadians all over the world. If Europeans want to join America, or help America, or lead with America, here is what you need to do: decide if you're an American, and then come to America, and be and American.
My basic argument is that we Europeans ought to know:
1) How dangerous Islam is
But also
2) How weak Islam is
The foremost weakness of Islam is that the majority of the people who are subjugates of these evil teachings actually HATE Islam.
Here in Sweden, there are plenty of “Muslims” who are happy to eat pork and drink alcohol.
These people wish to see the Iranian leaders of today drowned in their own blood and they have my full support.
Excellent point.
“Europe can’t help itself, much less the US”
- I beg to differ.
Just like the spirit of Nazism was broken once and for all by constant bombings of their home soil during WWII, Europe could take part in turning the main Islamofascist recruitment areas into wasteland.
It’s all about European willpower - and don’t underestimate the number of Europeans who view things my way.
” our survival depends on our ability and willingness to act unilaterally.”
- This attitude of Isolationism didn’t exactly aid America before the cold, concrete fact of Pearl Harbor, nor in the Vietnam War and neither are you going to win the WOT through retreating to a fairytale conception of reality.
Yes, it could. I just don't believe it will.
The people of Europe have surrendered a lot of freedoms to the EU. I hope I am wrong, but I just don't get the feeling that the strength of will is there.
You are interpreting my comment to mean isolationism. I don’t mean that at all. I mean than when circumstances warrant, the US must be willing to act unilaterally if we believe it to be necessary.
We should try to work with other countries as much as possible. But if it is in our interests, and no one else is willing to commit, then we better be willing to do by ourselves.
We don’t need anyone’s permission to defend ourselves. That’s not isolationism.
Liberals would let us be overrun if the UN said we shouldn’t defend ourselves.
“..I mean than when circumstances warrant, the US must be willing to act unilaterally if we believe it to be necessary.
We should try to work with other countries as much as possible. But if it is in our interests, and no one else is willing to commit, then we better be willing to do by ourselves.
We don’t need anyone’s permission to defend ourselves. That’s not isolationism.”
- OK, I get your point.
Greetings from Gothenburg, Sweden,
WesternCulture
Dutch Govt Targeting Comments on Islam-Critical Websites
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2036376/posts
And I don't think the US is far behind this sort of behavior.
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