Posted on 09/09/2001 10:58:32 AM PDT by Jean S
The European Union has agreed to apologize for slavery and racism. In one of history's great ironies, this news breaks just as Britain has reached a new agreement with Zimbabwe's kleptocracy.
That agreement attempts to bribe the kleptocrats into providing some measure of protection and compensation for embattled white farmers. Zimbabwe's government has targeted the farmers for fleecing and elimination. The New Labour buffoons in charge of Britain's government are stepping in to cushion the blow. Some farmers may benefit. The principal effect of Britain's involvement, however, will probably be to salve the perpetually inflamed consciences of Tony Blair, Jack Straw and their cohorts.
There is a long American tradition of viewing Europeans as both effete and trivial. There is a sound historical basis for this tradition. In the last two hundred years our forbearers conquered a continent while Europe fought silly wars over which inbred monarch got to control a few pigsties.
This history might at least have given Europe a military tradition to be proud of. It didn't. Instead, the carnage got so gross that Europe grew phobic about force. Its emasculation is nearly complete. Europe is left with just enough memory of past glory to resent its present day irrelevance.
The vigor of the West now resides almost entirely in the United States of America, which leads the world with respect to almost every human endeavor, even the production of fine wine. France still takes top honors in the production of edible fungi and inedible cheese. If history is any guide, however, even this advantage won't last long.
The EU's apology for racism and slavery is both mindless and spineless. It epitomizes the European elites at the start of the 21st century.
Why should Europe apologize for slavery? Every complex society ever invented by human beings sanctioned slavery until very recently. Only the West under the influence of Christianity ever conceived of the remarkable idea that slavery is wrong. The West decided that slavery should be abolished and forced the most of the world to comply.
Apologizing for slavery is like apologizing for original sin. We are all sinful and we all took a long time to learn that owning people is wrong. Aside from the few non-white and non-European people who still own slaves, nobody owes any apologies. Aside from the few people still held as slaves, nobody deserves any apologies. Europe should be proud of leading the world away from slavery, not contrite for having participated in slavery with everyone else.
Apologizing for racism is even more absurd than apologizing for slavery. No people is free of racism. Those who complain loudest about racism are often steeped in it themselves. Zimbabwe, for example, is a prominent member of the international chorus of racial victims at the same time it is busy looting and killing landowners because they have the temerity to be white.
There was never anything exceptional about European racism, except that colonialism gave European racists a lot of opportunities to irritate the people they despised. Maybe the EU really means to apologize for colonialism. But it is doubly absurd to apologize for colonialism and slavery at the same time. Without colonialism slavery would still be flourishing in much of the world, along with such other practices as immolating widows on their husbands' funeral pyres.
Colonial power was often abused. All power is often abused. In many, if not most places colonialism provided a far better government than any of the alternatives. History has proved this point with brutal redundancy. Consider, for example, the unfortunate transition from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe.
The EU diplomats know as well as anyone else that their apologies are nonsense. Why then are they offering them? The short answer is this: The Third World wants an apology and Europe lacks the courage to say them nay.
Europe's leaders feel guilty because the culture within which they constitute a backwater dominates the world. Their guilt leaches away what little manhood their history left them with.
Nobody understands the combination of cultural and material factors that made the West preeminent. Europe is a tiny corner of the world. In many ways, China got a long head start on it.
No matter how it happened, Western preeminence is a fact of life, now and for the foreseeable future. It came about as a result of forces beyond anybody's control. Nobody should feel guilty about it any more than one person should feel guilty about being taller than another.
There is nothing more likely to derail future success than feeling bad about past success. Feeling bad can distort judgment in all sorts of ways. The pending agreement between the U.K. and the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe is a case in point.
If Britain were even a shadow of its former self it wouldn't try to cut deals with the likes of Robert Mugabe. Marxist thugs should be beneath Her Majesty's government even in these decadent times.
The only rational approach to the abuse of the white farmers that Britain left behind when the tide of colonialism receded is to restore colonial government. Zimbabwe has tried to govern itself and failed miserably. A colonial government could see to it that property rights were respected and the prerequisites of prosperity were established.
Britain has the military power to recolonize Zimbabwe. But recolonization is nonetheless unthinkable. Britain lacks the will. It is far too busy apologizing for itself to do anything useful in one of its former colonies.
It beggars belief that Britain should be apologetic in dealing with Zimbabwe, but it is. Britain is, after all, part of the EU. European elites seem to loath Europe almost as much as they loathe America and their self-loathing is debilitating.
It would be comical if it weren't so sad.
J. Peter Mulhern can be reached at jp.mulhern@verizon.com
Return to this week's issue of the Washington Weekly
I think J. Peter Mulhern has reached escape velocity.
The White Man's Burden
By Rudyard Kipling
McClure's Magazine 12 (Feb. 1899).
Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go, bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait, in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child.
Take up the White Man's burden--
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain,
To seek another's profit
And work another's gain.
Take up the White Man's burden--
The savage wars of peace--
Fill full the mouth of Famine,
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
(The end for others sought)
Watch sloth and heathen folly
Bring all your hope to nought.
Take up the White Man's burden--
No iron rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper--
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go, make them with your living
And mark them with your dead.
Take up the White Man's burden,
And reap his old reward--
The blame of those ye better
The hate of those ye guard--
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:--
"Why brought ye us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?"
Take up the White Man's burden--
Ye dare not stoop to less--
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloak your weariness.
By all ye will or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent sullen peoples
Shall weigh your God and you.
Take up the White Man's burden!
Have done with childish days--
The lightly-proffered laurel,
The easy ungrudged praise:
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years,
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers.
Hey Bush et al forget the Hispanic votes they ain't gonna do much. Forget the Jewish vote it ain't gonna do much either. Forget the Christian vote they lost it long ago.
Now for the ________ vote.
A little down today aren't you ole Bert- Naw just looking at the news. Can't wait for the PC to go down a few more bucks.
The most simple of statements always seem to say it best for me. Your right. It's time for whitey to just look em in the eye and say, "Why don't you just bawl about it while your at it".
I pretty sure that I'm not the only one who read "Atlas Shrugged".
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