The New Old Europe

Nearly 10 years ago, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld provoked outrage by referring to "Old Europe." How dare he, snapped the French and Germans, call us "old" when the utopian European Union was all the rage, the new euro was soaring in value, and the United States was increasingly isolated under the Bush administration!

The island of Britain usually is, and is not, a part of Europe -- carefully pulling out when things heat up, terrified that it will be pulled back in when things boil over. British Prime Minister David Cameron knows the old script well, as he adamantly and publicly insists that Great Britain is still a part of the crumbling European Union while privately assuming that it is not.

No need to mention the German "problem": Whether the year was 1870, 1914, 1939 or 2011, Europeans always have feared a united Germany, whose people, for a variety of cultural reasons, produce more wealth than the nation's size might otherwise suggest.

In that regard, the more France talks of the glory of Gallic culture, the more it seeks to restrain its too-powerful next-door neighbor or, in humiliating fashion, seeks to appease Germany. No surprise that French President Nicolas Sarkozy now seems to be pursuing both tracks simultaneously.

For centuries, Mediterranean Europe -- the original dynamic birthplace of Western Civilization -- has stagnated in comparison to the north. The sunny south's doctrinaire Catholicism and Orthodoxy, greater vulnerability to nearby militant Ottomanism, and lack of Atlantic ports that looked out on the New World long ago relegated the Mediterranean nations to comparative stagnation. Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain were always considered nice warm places to vacation or retire, but not in which to work, live and raise a family. That stereotype is as alive in 2011 as it was in 1880.

The squabbling European family has always feared two great rivals -- Russia and radical Islam. From 1453 through the 18th century, Europe lived in fear of the Ottomans, who twice reached the gates of Vienna. Huge European armies invaded Russia twice, and both Napoleon and Hitler destroyed their own empires in their failed attempts at preemption.

Russia occupied half of Europe for almost a half-century and now tries to leverage with gas and oil what it used to with missiles and tanks. Europe is as dependent on the oil of Muslim nations as it is terrified of millions of new Islamic immigrants.

Jews have always been smeared by ambivalent Europeans -- discriminated against as too clannish in their creed, without ancestral land-holding lineages and aristocratic status. Once again Jews are now beginning to feel as unwelcome in Europe as they did in the 1930s -- or in 1543, when Martin Luther wrote his "On the Jews and Their Lies." Jewish academics are sometimes shunned at international conferences in Europe. Some suburbs in Paris or Rotterdam are no longer safe for Jews to walk about. Europe is largely anti-Israel and probably always will be.

After the Revolutionary War, Europeans both flocked to America and damned it as uncouth and crass, even as they looked to it for money and military help. Nothing has much changed here either, despite the utopian pronouncements of the European Union and the reset policies of the Obama administration.

Most European grandees recently felt that the American cowboys got what they deserved in Iraq and during the financial panic of 2008. Then they blamed their own fiscal meltdown on imported Wall Street viruses -- only to appeal for bailouts when southern European defaults threatened to destroy the European Union. In response, we habitually declare our independence and isolation. We promise never again to get involved in their squabbles and war -- only to find ourselves drawn knee-deep into them.

Like clockwork every few decades, some self-described European "visionaries" swear that the continent can either live in peace under utopian protocols or, more darkly, be united under one grand -- and undemocratic -- system, willingly or not. But for all the noble pretensions of the Congress of Vienna or the European Union -- or the nightmarish spread of Napoleon's Continental System and the Third Reich -- and for all the promises of European-born fascism, communism and socialism, the result is always the same: disunion, acrimony and infighting.

That schizophrenia is what we should expect from dozens of cultures and histories squeezed into too small a continent full of lots of bright -- and quite proud -- people. Every new Europe always ends up as old Europ

Been watching Rick Steve's Europe on Hulu. Kinda funny when he mentions how the new European Union has been helping whatever place he is visiting that episode. Might want to see the old Europe before it is bombed out and rebuilt once again. And yes I know they do not have big militaries right now, but since they are all in that same boat, lacking a big military wont stop em this time. Heck, the Texas Rangers could take France right now.

Rick Steve's Europe - Full Episodes

Hanson might have observed that the Europeans were largely right about our war in Iraq and we were largely wrong.

It Hanson disparages Europe for Greece what does he have to say about America because of California?

It Hanson deplores Europe with relatively little petroleum resources of its own for her being dependent on Muslim oil, what does he have to say about America with abundant carbon energy being dependent on foreign sources? What about European dependence on Russian gas compared to American dependence on Venezuela?

If Europe is reverting to anti-Semitism, has not America been bound against its interests to a tiny country with no oil surrounded by hundreds of millions with abundant oil? If Europe has given itself over to anti-Semitic bigots, has not America surrendered sovereignty to the Israeli lobby?

If Hanson blames Europe for blaming the financial meltdown on America, can he explain our subprime fiasco? Can he explain our national debt? Can he explain our failure to oversee derivatives and our over-regulation of Sarbanes-Oxley and Dodd -Frank? Can he justify our trade imbalance with China?

The point of all this is not to set up Europe as being superior to America or to tear America down to the level of Europe, as an ex-pat in Germany I am pressed to defend American almost every day, the point is that we have much work to do it home before we lecture the world.

Yes and no. Mostly this paragraph is filled with generalisms --> Italy was the centre of banking, finance, trade etc. right up until the 1500s when the Ottomans conquered Constantinople. It continued to be a centre for a couple of more centuries but the Atlantic powers like Spain and Portugal followed by the Netherlands (1600s late) and England and France. Germany was still divided.

however, to the point, Northern Europe didn't overtake the South until the mid to late 1700s

the "doctrinnaire" of Catholicism didn't stop the Catholic countries of France, Belgium, southern Germany etc. from prospering. for Orthodoxy it's difficult because at that time nearly all Orthodox countries were under the Ottoman Moslem yoke while Russia was still in Muscowy barbarism until the 1800s.

" Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain were always considered nice warm places to vacation or retire, but not in which to work, live and raise a family." --> true from the post-Napoleonic era, but not from earlier.

Again generalizations -- "always"? Islam YES, but Russia has only been noticed since the time of Peter the Great. Prior to that, in the 1600s the Swedes defeated them and the Poles in fact conquered Moscow.

Victor Davis Hanson has written a book called ‘Mexifornia’ and holds no brief for his own state in which he has his own vineyard.

VDH and Paul Johnson have no equals when it comes to classical historians.

VDH has addressed all your points in regard to how a once robust America has fallen to the depths of the anti-democratic, multi-cultural, plutocratic EU.
At least we have not yet criminalized freedom of speech.
PC is bad enough as my tagline attests.

I was born not far from where you now reside in beautiful Bavaria, and now live not far from Nathan Bedford’s resting place - lol. I hold dual German-US citizenship. I did not see VDH’s article as disparagement of Europe. It was a typically brilliant historical perspective for which VDH is renowned. VDH was questioning as to how different are the old and new Europe really?

Sadly, all your accusations against the USA just further indict the EU, the UN, and the International Court of Justice in that we are just repeating their failures and fascist progressivism. I notice you didn’t disagree with VDH, just countered with “So’s your old man.”

I love my homeland. I despise the EU just as I despise all autocrats that crush personal freedoms. I hope to retire one day with the Alps as my backyard. Hope you are enjoying the gluwein. Frohliches Neus Jahr. Always enjoy your posts.

There are two columnists whose appearance on these threads reliably produce food for thought. One is Dennis Prager and the other is Victor Hansen. I make a practice of replying whenever I see their work.

I think Hansen's column in this case should be judged on its own terms. That is, despite his body of work which as you quite properly point out insightfully deals with many of the problems in Europe that the left has also visited on America, this column makes no such reference. I think some balance is called for.

I would like to have seen him draw the parallels showing how the American system is being undermined as it apes Europe.

The Alps have snow on the caps but the likes are not frozen with only the faintest skin of ice. Yesterday was gloriously sunny but today is gray but my son, who just returned from snowboarding, says they got some sun on the ski runs.

Happy New Year back to you.

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