Dear Readers of the FreeRepblic Forum,

Well hello there proud patriotic Americans. Here speaks an European Intellectual of the kind you despise so very much. I am a person who is proud to be European and an intellectual Dutchman at the very same time. It makes me grin to be honest, to contemplate the state of affairs here in Europe today. With our EURO which might eventually topple the US Dollar and the inflated US economy. How I believe our investments in the hydrogen economy will for instance be implemented within only a few decades. Yet I am also fond about the idea how it is possible for us Old Europe to finally comprise a confederation which America was bound to be just after its Civil War. For Europe will be the democratic confederation of Europe based on the values of mutual respect between the provincial periphery and the Urban Centrum of its realm, a balance between the East and West, between the cultures of the orient and those which are our very own. We Europeans will find a balance of power attained by a universal legal code the America constitution (if she was amended to adapt more often) was perhaps meant to be.
Now I write to this forum because I endorse upopular politics myself, but more so becasue I don't appreciate the work of R. Kagan and other "neo-conservative" writers. For they have polarized and provocated the international debate on war and peace for quite a while by now. I admit however that I as well, do recognize the image induced by Kagan, that todays Europe is indeed -when compared to the US- like the ancient Greek City states of before. Europe is perhaps dozing off into its temples of oblivion and memoir, but you must understand the splendour of these temples and cityscapes to find out why that is. Yet even without this understanding I still think you Americans should respect us for what this continent is and what its people have sustained over time with the inventions of modernity. Allmost all European Nation States are after all older then the modern period itself and European nation building has compriced allmost all social, political and judicial developments in time known to man. Allow me then to be the cynic here and claim that Europeans might have a better clue on what to do in Iraq next to lorrying in the Coca Cola company.
So hearing this argument I hope you can imagin -me being a historian- that I do demand some respect of America and Americans in return for the European awe of morning America. I give you the example of the people of Rome, Americas antique anology, an Empire which did not shy away to pay tribute to the Greek settlers who had brought sophistication to the early latin world. So if America really wants to be an enlightend Modern Roman Empire and take man to the heavens, then she should attain these very same adaptatable and diplomactic skills as the Romans posed in the conduct of religion and custome towards its subjects.
Many European mothers still to tell their sons and daughets not to forget where he or she comes from, class-wise and culture-wise. So I tell you, that identity is far removed from francised coffeebars and fastfood chains. People here are still taught to fight for who what he or she thinks he is, even when this fighting is done with wallets and the pens, and even when the challenged identities concerns only the kind of cheese a person likes to eat or when a veil is an approriate thing to ware or not. Only we in Europe don't want to fight our friends the Americans for something silly like that, neighter do we want to return to State enforced nihilism, neither do most Muslims actually. Yet the difference between a Muslim and a Christian European is that sometimes a Muslim really doesn't have much left to life for then the pride of being a Muslim. So when this young man in dispair meets a psychopaat, well he will go BOOM eventually in the harsh reality of living in the Middle East. Secondly, concerning the EU and the US, there is friction between our two continents because we Europeans also don't have a citizens army or militias after the American model. So hence we are cautious about the US its military ambitions. The Waffen US is a yell frequently spotted on flyers handed out and applied by squaters and other red radicals in the European Capitals. Because after the attrocities of our very own civil war in Europe, the defenses of this continent have become that of a popular army. Now that the Cold war is over these boys and girls in uniform have been turned into proffsional peace keepers. For European military capacities are non offensive and remain to consist primarelly of conscripts and the institutes of an archaic military tradition unknown to the public.
The American however, despite his mussles and intellect, should not dare not to respect us for who we are, French, Dutch or German, even if we seem like stuffy book people and spoiled spoils of the wellfare state. Because it is only you Americans who think you are so bloody special. As if we are less special in our own national narratives and constructs. Constructs we have been forced to abandon and reconstruct after the 1940s debacle, simply because some American told us to do so if we wanted to keep these Russians out and rebuild our countries, and thank God for that. But just like American exceptionalism is after all mostly conceived by the hope of people here in Europe, the hope for a promised land far away from the gray medieval fields and forests of Europe. This promise proved of course to be a mirage eventually, only to be a paradise for members of the parochi. While at the same time here in Europe we finally learned to cope with the ever present fear of revolution and chaos in our social condusts and contracts. I really think it takes more faith to be American then to be French in the end. French are born French while Americans are brought up to be Americans. Frenchman or Dutchman are however just French or Dutch because they were educated at a State schools in a national language, paid by the state, and raised to live from and for the bounties provided by the common good of the public. For life was a bum for most part of the Human history you know, when the means of modernity were not yet readly available and only to be gained over the backs of blacks, woman, and the yellow man. The French and Europeans have remembered the material and moral scarcity of before thanx to the bliss and creation of America. America however is a relative fresh fish in this prison called Earth, it really needs to work on its public confidence to be more of a fair Nation State then just the mere symbols it is today. I believe America still to be a rather naive and shallow country sometimes, despite its victories over the last couple of centuries, despite the American cultural hegemony, despite the GI generation we Europeans have learned to respect so very much. Yet Alas Iraq, alas Vietnam, alas Nijmegen!
Our own European histories on the other hand makes us shiver of shame at times, and we enjoy that shiver very very much even. Because although we have not lived our national histories, she is our history and not a justification for anything or anybody. Neither is our history an American tale to tell. Because what we want today is you to respect us for our national and intra-national experiences in modernizing the world completely, we Europeans want to aid you America in being the juggernauts of tommorow. The roll of leadership we Europeans indeed will and never want to take up on ourselves again. Yet America as a people really lack a healthy historical perspective on the world of today and yesterday in order to be the world leader instead of us, your national creed is one of boundless optimism, to persist and keep on moving forward what ever it takes, this frontier-geist that is sollely American indeed.
For when it concerns world history I often encounter historism when I read your news papers and see your films discussing the fruits of American persistence. This is often a kind of historical revisionism even, for you won the Vietnam war on the silver screen, ...remember. You Americans just could not accept defeat, afraid of yet another domino effect, paranoid bull*hit of course.
I find this so awkward you know, while most exalted and praised academics in the field of history are Americans. Why is it that American citizens and popular culture in general distrusts people who acclaim authority because they know things from the past, because they are just very well informed about a situation and not need to provoke a show to explain oneself? Do you really think stubbornness or a hyped economy of what ever kind is a grantuee for your emancipated liberal modernity? Please stop America, please stop being such a vain nation, stop thinking 9-11 was the apocalypse, stop being the Promised Land before we in Europe as well lean back again on our very own "special" history and modern myths. Our shamefull history of how we conquered the Western World almost twice and colonized the remainder of all people on earth! Please give us Europeans the impression we are heard in Washington about the aims and strategy of the war on terror and poverty, that is the only thing what it takes for Europe to come along with America and be its auxiliary forces. The UN resolution of earlier this week and the new plans for Israel and the Palestines are indeed both a great leap forward in dealing with the Middle East in harmony. Universal law and legislation will share your burden as the leader of the free world in coping with the radicals and extremist who oppose the stability of today.

Pieter Keesen