[Tolik]

    Victor Davis Hanson Ping ! 

       Let me know if you want in or out.

Links: FR Index of his articles:  http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/keyword?k=victordavishanson 
His website: http://victorhanson.com/     NRO archive: http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson-archive.asp

[magslinger]

I have no great love for Europe. Never been, never will. I don't hate Europeans, some are jerks, most aren't, the same as anywhere else. My ancestors were kicked out of most of Western Europe, and I supose I should be grateful for that, but my reason for wanting to save Europe from Islam is strictly practical. Fight there, or fight it here, just like the 1940's and the 1980's.

[garyhope]

Hanson and Steyn double ping!

It's depressing to me to see what's happening in Europe. Western civilization can't separate itself from Europe.

Will Europe act to protect itself from Islamofascism and its own suicide? I hope so, but not with idiots like Chirac leading the parade.

[Shery]

WOW! One of my favorite writers of all time! I hope some of our neighbors and friends actually read this...we live in Germany!

[newcthem]

Fantastic piece...........made my day. Thanks.

[Carry_Okie]

He didn't mention that not only is Europe aging, but it doesn't even have an adequate number of young men with which to defend itself.

[Tenacious 1]

[Although we Americans think the European Union is a flawed notion and will not survive to fulfill its present aspirations, we hope in some strange way that it does — for both our sakes of having a proud partner in a more dangerous world to come rather than an angry and envious inferior, nursing past glories while blaming others for self-inflicted wounds of the present.]

What a turn. Very creative writing across the whole piece. The sugar brings the reader to the palm only to be slapped, scolded, educated and sent away to reform with a swift pat on the but.

[steel_resolve]

Christopher Hitchens used to be my favorite essayist. Victor David Hanson is LIGHT YEARS ahead of him. Every article I read of his I have to save on my hard drive. Absomutely amazing.

[Malesherbes]

I would hope that this piece by VDH would be widely circulated in western Europe and that it be properly understood there. Eastern Europe is a different matter. I visit Poland twice a year, and in no way is Poland about to expire.

[Tax-chick]

bttt

[oldbrowser]

European Union diplomats, who themselves operate as Greek philosophers in the agora only on the condition that Americans will once more play the role of Roman legionaries in the shadows.

I think this time around we should start "taxing" countries for liberating them or providing security for their lame governments.

[Billthedrill]

We wish you well in your faith that war has become obsolete and that outlaw nations will comply with international jurisprudence that was born and is nurtured in Europe.

That was the sad and false dream of the entire post-WWII world, not just Europe. The idea, as I remember it, was that WWII was so horrible that war in general was an unthinkable alternative in international relations.

People forget, but more to the point, young people do not believe, and to a new generation that did not experience the horrors of the camps and the trenches war seems, as it has always seemed, a viable alternative. I have yet to find in history a time when people so convinced have been talked out of the notion. And it doesn't take very many of them, either, in an age where technology offers a huge destructive force to relatively few.

There is an underlying pacifist assumption that only conquerors and would-be conquerors possess swords, and that universal disarmament will result in a rejection of force as a policy tool. That is a lesson people must un-learn as often as the "war is a first resort" lesson.

Beat the plowshares back into swords. The other was a maiden aunt's dream. - Robert Heinlein.

[King Prout]

too good to not megaping

[Ghost of Philip Marlowe]

A decent read.

Typically, I admire the writing of VDH. But there are some points in the article I disagree with. First, I don't like the hyper-humility with which he presents America. We are not the intellectual, aesthetic, artistic and moral inferiors of Europe. We need not apologize or beg acceptance by them. Yes, we grew out of them, but as much in resistance and in contrariety to what they became as from our shared values.

That contrariety has led to the second great divide between a once powerful unity. From the beginning of our shared socio-political foundations in the soil of Attic Greece, there has been a divide between the State and the Individual. Most of what VDH refers to can be reduced to adhering to either of these principles. Much of the ills he cites are from adhering to the former. That which distinguishes American history and that is at the root of much of European and Islamofascist loathing of us (part of the ideology that unites Leftists with terrorists) is our adherence to the latter principle.

His cry for the EU to save Europe is misguided. The EU was developed by Socialists as a last-ditch effort to unify the economies of Europe in order to compete with and suffocate the free-market economy of America. It is another nail in their coffin, not a breaking-free of their shackles.

While I join him in hoping Europe pulls together to protect the foundational precepts that are the core of Western civilization, at this point we are calling for Europe to save herself from herself. That is, they need to return to the liberal (in the classical sense) principles that began when they shed the yoke of monarchy and of economic systems ruled by the central management of monarchies and other undemocratic governments. As usual, this will probably happen, if it happens, only after the cultural climate gets far more tyrannical and the bloodshed far more gruesome. In the meantime, the EU may well aid the Islamofascists in their goal of surrounding and isolating America as the last bastion of freedom to be conquered. Thus the great campaign of the State against the Individual rages on. And we Americans find ourselves, again, sacrificing much and risking all in order to preserve liberty. Cry the beloved continent.

[x]

He's actually right this time -- the European system isn't sustainable -- but he's way too hectoring. Imagine how we'd react if a European wrote in such a condescending tone to Americans. It's not the way you treat people you want to win over. Of course, VD's not really writing to them, but to Americans who already accept his point of view.

This I have to wonder about, though:

In the multiracial society of the United States, an American black, Asian, or Latino finds natural affinity in London and Brussels in a way not true in Lagos, Ho Chi Minh City, or Lima. For millions of Americans "Eurocentric" is no slur — for it is an appellation of shared values and ideas not of race.

It was certainly true twenty or fifty years ago that Americans felt closer to Europe than to those other parts of the world. Europe was "home" even to those who weren't of predominantly European ancestry -- though of course, our relationship to Europe, whatever our race or ancestry, has been a complicated and conflicted one.

Is it still true now that Americans, White or Black or Asian or Latino feel closer to Europe than to Asia or Latin America or Australia or Africa? As different as other parts of the world may be, widespread American popular culture has a way of smoothing the way for us, at least in the cities.

Our schooling doesn't make us feel closer to Europe as it once did. If things continue in the same way for 20 more years, we'll feel as much in or out of place in Lima or Tokyo or Lagos as in Paris or Rome or Copenhagen. Of course, as other countries develop their own popular culture and make their own particular adaptations to modernity, this may all change, and make the outside world more alien.

[goldstategop]

I don't mind the demise of Europe. The loss of a model for our Democrats would be a blessing in disguise. If the welfare state can't be sustained over there in another generation, the odds are a European-type welfare state would die aborning in America. The Europeans act like immature children ignorant of the world's real troubles. Whether they grow up is up to them. We are quite simply tired of their anti-Americanism and refusal to shoulder their share of responsibility for the defense of the civilized world. I'm probably the last American alive whose parents were born in the old European heartlands. And if the Continent is in a predicament, it is one of its own making. For following in the footpath of the socialist philosophies is a sure and swift descent to the grave. Europe deserves better than what its present leaders have given it.

(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")

[hershey]

That was some essay! Frighteningly clear, accurate analysis of Europeans rushing headlong over the cliff, like lemmings. Whew, V.D.H. pulls no punches.