Mark Steyn: War between America and Europe

The Spectator (U.K.) ^ | 12/27/2001 | Mark Steyn

[Khepera]

Support God - Support Israel - The Jews are blessed by god and to damn them is to damn yourself.

[Pokey78]

Ping for the MSPL.

Due to a computer failure, my ping lists have been lost. If you were on the Steyn list and I did not ping you, or if you want to be on the MSPL, then either leave a note on this thread or FReepmail me.

[rellimpank]

--Mark Steyn--one of the greatest editorial writers in the world--

[jalisco555]

Wow! Steyn just gets better and better.

[jalisco555]

Please add me to the Steyn ping list. Thanks.

[Paradox]

This is perfectly understandable: a certain type of Englishman looks at an Arab and sees a desert version of his most cherished self-delusions.

LOL! This guys nails it all in one sentence! He then goes on to explain further, but this is the core of his article. Another GREAT one from Steyn.

[general_re]

Due to a computer failure, my ping lists have been lost.

I didn't get religion about backups until it was too late either ;)

Please add me to the list...

[Christian B]

What was it George Washington said about avoiding permanent foreign alliances? I'd be interested to hear if anyone thinks it has any relevance to what is going on in Israel right now.

[machman]

Yeah, what he said.

[NewAmsterdam]

Comments please. Steyn is a fabulous writer but he is losing the plot a bit, in my view.

[denydenydeny]

Bump.

[Logophile]

Steyn nails it again:

America supports Israel not because it’s Jewish but because it’s democratic. In fact, Republicans support Israel despite the Jews. American Jews are urban liberals and one of the Democratic party’s most reliable core demographics. There is no political benefit whatsoever to Bush in taking a ‘hard pro-Israel line’. . . . My northern, rural, conservative neighbours are, when you prod ’em a little, mildly xenophobic and share a reflexive distaste for overt Jewishness. But they’ll always back Israel over Syria or Egypt because to them liberty trumps everything else. They are also under no illusions as to the kind of state an Arafat-led Palestine would be: if you gave him Switzerland to run, he’d turn it into a sewer. So Republicans look at Israel and see not Jews but a liberal democracy.

And again:

If America recognises a kindred spirit in Israel, then so does Europe in the Arab autocracies. After all, when King Fahd, President Mubarak, et al. sell themselves to the West as anti-democratic brakes on the baser urges of their people, they sound a lot like the European Union. As we’ve seen yet again, the principle underpinning the new Europe is not ‘We, the people’ but ‘We know better than the people’ — not just on capital punishment and the Treaty of Nice and the single currency, but on pretty much anything that comes up, including national elections.

[Guillam]

Great stuff. If two hundred years from now a student wanted to understand the tenor of our times he or she would need nothing more than the writings of Steyn and Peggy Noonan.

[B Knotts]

Steyn nails it again!

[randog]

Arabs are just as famously hopeless at economic creativity: they have oil, but require foreigners to extract it and refine it.

True story. Arabs import all of their skilled labor.

[TroutStalker]

Thank you in advance for adding me back onto your Steyn list. This one is a very good read.

[staytrue]

The article was a nice read, but the author missed another point and that is there is a similar war going on inside america. It is about mostly what he talks about and that is a culture that values work, inventivness, independence and one that would like to have america be like Europe, that is a society where the elite rules because the commoner can't possibly know better.

I recently went to a speech given by Oliver North. One thing he said rings true to me. He said (in reference to 9-11) "they don't hate us because of anything we did, they hate us because of who we are"

[hsszionist]

Anti-semitism is alive and well on planet Earth, and has expanded to include the allies of Israel. The pagan hordes are gathering to take a spoil.