Posted on 02/22/2005 3:46:04 PM PST by Ooh-Ah
Recent books have raved that the European Union is the way of the future. In contrast, a supposedly exhausted, broke and post-imperial United States chases the terrorist chimera, running up debts and deficits as it tilts at the autocratic windmills of the Arab World.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
We keep assuming that Europeans are like Britain and Japan when in fact long ago they devolved more into a Switzerland and Sweden -- friendly neutrals but no longer real allies. In the meantime, let us Americans keep much more quiet, wait, and watch -- even as we carry a far bigger stick.
Why bother to post this. The article is subscriber only.
Well, the fallacy with the popular perception that the European "Union" is the wave of the future, and the United States a declining dinosaur of the past is that.....nothing is as it seems on the surface.
It is usually not wise to speculate upon future events and trends, but my "history" gut-instinct tells me that the European "Union" is going to be "past history" by 2020.
excellent point, subscribers to the WSJ online are no doubt going to read this article anyway. all posting this teaser does is agitate those of us unwilling to cough up the $80(?) for a subscription~!
upon further thought, I suppose that posting a subscriber only article does solicit reponses and discussion amongst the subscribers... I stand self-corrected!
upon further thought, I suppose that posting a subscriber only article does solicit reponses and discussion amongst the subscribers... I stand self-corrected!
But privately bureaucrats in Brussels are far more worried about different and scarier long-term concomitant signs: high unemployment, static rates of worker productivity, low birthrates, Islamicist minorities, looming unfunded entitlement obligations, and a high-sounding pacifism that is being increasingly seen world-wide as base appeasement by friend and enemy alike.
It's a good piece -- it reads very well.
The United States should ignore all this ankle-biting, praise the EU to the skies, but not take very seriously their views on the world until we learn exactly what is going on inside Europe during these years of its uncertainty. America is watching enormous historical forces being unleashed on the continent from its own depopulation, new anti-Semitism, and rising Islamicism to Turkish demands for EU membership and further expansion of the Union into the backwaters of Eastern Europe that will bring it to the doorstep of Russia. Whether its politics and economy will evolve to embrace more personal freedom, its popular culture will integrate its minorities, and its military will step up to protect Western values and visions is unclear. But what is certain is that the U.S. cannot remain a true ally of a militarily weak but shrill Europe should its politics grow even more resentful and neutralist, always nursing old wounds and new conspiracies, amoral in its inability to act, quite ready to preach to those who do.
$215.00
$215.00 ?! Holy samolians, that's one way to keep out the riff raff,,,
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