Democracies Can't Compromise on Core Values

As the American president embarked on his farewell tour of Europe last week, Der Spiegel, echoing the sentiments of a number of leading newspapers on the Continent, pronounced "Europe happy to see the back of Bush." Virtually everyone seems to believe that George W. Bush's tenure has undermined trans-Atlantic ties.

There is also a palpable sense in Europe that America will move closer to Europe in the years ahead, especially if Barack Obama wins the presidential election.

But while Mr. Bush is widely seen by Europeans as a religious cowboy with a Manichean view on the world, Europe's growing rift with America predates the current occupant of the White House. When a French foreign minister, Hubert Védrine, declared that his country "cannot accept a politically unipolar world, nor a culturally uniform world, nor the unilateralism of a single hyper power," President Clinton was in the seventh year of his presidency and Mr. Bush was still governor of Texas.

The trans-Atlantic rift is not the function of one president, but the product of deep ideological forces that for generations have worked to shape the divergent views of Americans and Europeans. Foremost among these are different attitudes toward identity in general, and the relationship between identity and democracy in particular.

To Europeans, identity and democracy are locked in a zero-sum struggle. Strong identities, especially religious or national identities, are seen as a threat to democratic life. This is what Dominique Moisi, a special adviser at the French Institute of International Relations, meant when he said in 2006 that "the combination of religion and nationalism in America is frightening. We feel betrayed by God and by nationalism, which is why we are building the European Union as a barrier to religious warfare."

Great article, and thanks for posting. I'd never thought about postmodernism and multiculturalism as "post-identity" and am going to have to give that insight some serious thought.

The reality is that Muslim identity has grown stronger, has become more fundamentalist, and is increasingly contemptuous of a vapid "European" identity that has little vitality.

That is it precisely. Mark Steyn described it as "culturally confident." It is indeed a matter of identity and if Muslims reject the rather tasteless, tentative, and occasionally bombastic European view that internationalist institutions have some sort of moral transcendency over national ones, I for one cannot blame them. So do I.

Europeans are now saying goodbye to Mr. Bush, and hoping for the election of an American president who they believe shares their sophisticated postnational, postmodern and multicultural attitudes. But don't be surprised if, in the years ahead, European leaders, in order to protect freedom and democracy at home, start sounding more and more like the straight-shooting cowboy from abroad they now love to hate.

Assuming their institutions let them get away with it, that is. One cannot come to emulate Bush if one's own government outlaws "straight-shooting" speech. Of all of the people in all of the world, Sharansky knows this very well on a personal basis.

Bush hatred is at least 50% because "everybody" seems to agree on it, a worthless act of groupthink to which the MSM and academia style themselves immune and by which are, in fact, the most completely overwhelmed. Some of its victims will never recover. There are still persons within both completely consumed with a similar hatred of Richard Nixon without the slightest idea why (beyond hearsay, belief in which is itself a form of groupthink). Europeans have more of an excuse than do Americans for this, their own information being necessarily derivative.

Time will tell. It didn't take that long for the major Reagan-haters to find that circumstances marginalized them. I would not like to contemplate the circumstances that might lend that result to Bush.

Allow me to send a few thoughts in the direction of Dominique:

“The French have all the answers. That is why their history is so full of correct decisions in all matters of war and peace”

“Our “intellectuals” should have seen the emasculation of Europe as a precursor of our own demise. Instead, this softening of collective resolve and spirit was hailed by many as the ultimate human evolvement, a “social paradise”, one that we should aspire to.
Sadly, events may ultimately bring about the folly of their “miscalculation” in a way that all of us my never recover from”.

“Impossible you say, but is it not true, that, in the absence of conflict, we implode? Is it not in national struggle where we find honor, courage, virtue, all that binds us? Might it not also be a paradox, that what we deem so undesirable, is also that which brings us intensity of spirit, of expression (art)-—and a sense of existence?
Imagination leads us to entertain a dreamy world of idyllic pleasures instead.
This is not where we were meant to go. There is little of value there. Omnipresent boredom will eventually reign, resulting in the inevitable desire to bring about adversity again.
It is universal!
It is in the molecules!!

Even liberals cannot change it!”

Finally:

“If we ever discard our nationalism, we will cease to breathe.”
“Literally!”

James Christopher Hall/The Humanity Savers

This rant is special for you, Dominique. It is in honor of all those in my early life who sacrificed their blood so that the French could continue to try to destroy Western Civilization through their “intellectual” pretensions and their particular brand of fecklessness!

Hope against hope that it finds it’s way to your dreary life!

The MSM and academia are not "overwhelmed" by groupthink; they are the principle propagators of it, relying on the propaganda principle that a lie repeated often enough (while denying opponents any chance to refute it) becomes accepted as truth. E.g. anthropogenic global warming is "real," Che Guevara was a romantic "hero," etc.

The Left's hatred of Richard Nixon is based on his early career as an anti-Communist, although "useful idiots" may not know this.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.