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[Big_Bird]

[gmat]

Victor Davis Hanson wrote about this recently - March 4, 2005:

Eurospeak - Sorting out the teenage sass

President Bush supposedly charmed the Europeans, and now they purportedly don't hate us any more. But from the recent trip, it is clear that Americans can still expect two things from the European public and its leadership: deep-seated anti-Americanism and embarrassing contradictions. In that context, let us examine all the recent Eurobabble.

Don't dare divide us into old and new! We speak with one voice from Warsaw to Lisbon. We aim to be as united as your states are in America — BUT help us to ensure that Europe has separate U.N. Security Council seats for Britain, France, and, we hope, Germany as well.

Stop using force to solve problems! Listen to our diplomats. Promote international courts. The world no longer works according to your silly laws of military power and deterrence — BUT don't dare take any more American troops out of Germany.

Stay in NATO! You are pledged to the collective defense of Europe — BUT get used to the fact that we will soon have a new and rival independent EU military force.

Pay attention to the Muslim world! Hear us who have more experience with the Middle East. Try to incorporate, rather than isolate, the "other" — BUT stop telling us that we have to let Turkey into the EU.

Cease militarizing the globe! See instead the world as an interconnected family of liberal societies that is trying to settle differences by reason — BUT stop trying to prevent us from selling hi-tech arms to big Communist China to threaten tiny democratic Taiwan.

Learn from our more humane culture! See how our short work week, cradle-to-grave entitlements, and pacifism promote well-being — BUT how exactly do you rich and powerful Americans do all that you do?

Remember that we are your critical partners in the war against terrorism! Appreciate our unheralded work that goes unnoticed amid the loud bombs and tanks of you rowdy Americans — BUT Hezbollah is not a terrorist organization and cannot be labeled as such (and Hamas isn't either and needs our financial support).

Sign Kyoto! Start acting like good global citizens! BUT quit suggesting we had a hand in the Rwanda mess, the Balkans mess, the Oil-for-Food Mess, the Saddam-reactor mess, the Hezbollah/Hamas mess, the Arafat mess...

Quit proceeding unilaterally! Refer events that affect the world to the U.N. Don't just act on your own as if your deeds don't affect others — BUT don't remember the Falklands, the Ivory Coast, the unification of Germany, or the oil deals with Saddam.

Don't tamper in the Middle East! Do you cowboys realize what madness you are unleashing? BUT if you succeed we might just stop our caricatures — IF democracy follows and we can take credit for and profit from it.

What are we to make of this strange passive-aggressive syndrome? The usual explanations, offered weekly during the last three years, are that in the post-Cold War era the monopoly on military force, and its accompanying opportunities for unilateral action by the United States, naturally earn opposition. Our military prompts envy and with it mistrust from those far weaker who seek to curb raw power with multilateral protocol, shame, and bureaucracy. Perhaps.

Of course, there have always been tensions arising from our two differing views of the Western cultural paradigm. Those disagreements are now brought to the fore thanks to the demise of the common threat of Soviet imperial Communism that could have overrun Western Europe in weeks. Europe bites now — simply because it can. Maybe.

But in all of our own lives — especially in the case with beloved teenagers — we have endured such immaturity: the 16-year old who demands "her" allowance and the freedom to use it as she wishes, but calls at midnight when she is broke; the 21-year-old who comes in at 3 A.M., but apparently chooses not to entertain such hours in his own home at his own expense.

These are the natural contradictions in the evolution from childhood to maturity. Europe may be old, but its union is young. It wants to be independent and powerful, but given its past bloody history and present utopian ideology it's not sure quite what that entails. Its leadership points to a strong Euro, low inflation, trade surpluses, and a high standard of living, but is really more worried about a low birthrate, troublesome unassimilated minorities from the Middle East, static worker productivity, high unemployment, and poor rates of economic growth.

Europe has cash to buy off enemies like Iran and bribe terrorists like Arafat and Hezbollah, but apparently not the will to maintain a military to protect itself. No doubt it will have a part to play in the new Middle East, as it did in Eastern Europe — even as it quietly forgets how it slandered Reagan and Bush, who alone made that role all happen.

Our cousins abroad cannot figure out why a crass nation of former European rejects, led by a cowboy from Texas, is wealthier, stronger, and more willing to sacrifice for principle than a more venerated, cultured, and aristocratic civilization. Europe, it turns out, worships class and privilege in the flesh while it damns them in the abstract — even as the uncouth popular culture of America that has corrupted the planet is most welcome and at home in, of all places, Europe.

All this was known to our ancestors, chronicled in our literature, enshrined in our popular memory, and carefully noted by our diplomats from Jefferson and Lincoln to Roosevelt and Wilson. Yet the half-century aberration of the Cold War disguised our differences and lured us into collective amnesia. Unlike World War I, after World War II we wisely stayed on to prevent another conflagration. Yet having a common enemy in the Soviet Union misled some of us into thinking that an identical Europe and American would always see eye to eye, when we never really had — despite our cultural and democratic affinities. And now we have come to the end of the Age of Exception, a sobriety brought on by the fall of the Berlin Wall and the stark aftermath of September 11, which scrapped off the thin veneer and revealed particle board, not oak, beneath.

So if Europe sounds conflicted, that's because it is. One symptom of such a troubled patient is its blustering rhetoric — as if words can mask reality, as if idealistic vocabulary and shots at America can substitute for faith in Western values, sacrifice, and risk-taking. One reason that Europe understands so well the braggadocio and sense of inferiority of the impotent Muslim world is that it suffers precisely from some of these same maladies in its own problematic relationship with the United States. A Muslim in Europe who puts a picture of bin Laden on his wall is the equivalent of a European chanting that Bush is Hitler: The Arab does not really wish to destroy the opulent European network that he counts on, nor does the European in jeans with a cell phone truly wish the U.S. would stop protecting his lifestyle. Yet each feels terrible about his own hypocrisy and accompanying appetites for what he professedly hates, and so looks to express angst on the cheap.

The world as we knew it is now in flux, and in one of greatest transformations since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Middle East is slowly rejoining civilization. In response, Europe snores, awakening only to chastise the United States, which alone set off the chain reaction of liberty. After all, would Europe send help to the Lebanese if the Syrians brought in more troops? Would it do anything if Iran announced that it actually does have five or six nukes and the missiles to deliver them? And would the vaunted EU joint force or the French navy mobilize if China invaded Taiwan or if North Korea shelled Seoul? Or does the free world stop at the borders of Europe? Did the Spanish army ensure the election in Iraq? In the meantime, it is better to damn the United States, which got al Qaeda out of Afghanistan, toppled Saddam, and ignited democratic movements across the Middle East.

What should the U.S. do about these aggravating moments, these 40-something nesters who like staying in the house but not maintaining or repairing it? Like all parents, ignore the childish slander and wish our Europeans well on their belatedly new lives. So close the door firmly with a warm hug, and remind them that they are still part of the family after all — always welcome for visits, but of course never quite encouraged to move back in.

[Alias]

...neo-cons hate that they were right about Iraq.

[Wrench]

I think American right wingers hate just about everything.

[Summer Wine]

I think American right wingers hate just about everything.

Explain, I am not North American, so I would like better info. Do you support that or disgree with that???

[Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee]

They have Europe because old Europe is doing most everything they can to see that the US is weakened and cut down to size because old Europe doesn't want to be eclipsed by the US. Europe started this from the time the cold war ended. It is kind of natural to answer back.

[Apple Scruff]

[Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee]

Old Europe didn't help the US contain Saddam nor have they been willing to do anything other than business than usual in the mid east.

They were perfectly willing to leave the US in a difficult situation over there.

They haven't helped the US on anything since they end of the cold war. They were this way before the US elected the "idiot in chief " Old Europe was doing the same stuff when Clinton was in office.

[Leslie Cheswyck]

Do American right-wingers hate Europe?

[Yu_Bum_suk]

The main reason they hate Europe, I think, is much the same as why they don't like Canada. Europe is more tolerant of gays but God isn't smiting it down. It has more liberal laws in many cases but less crime and far fewer prisoners. It has less money per capita but less poverty in most countries. It embarrasses the US in overall education.

There's also another seldom-discussed reason: a minority, but not a small minority, of Americans think they are on the brink of the end times. One expectation is an evil world government. It used to be feared by many that this would be done by the communists, but today the EU and UN are the only real contenders, and most Americans associate the UN strongly with Europe. This really scares the piss out of some religious extremists, and because they believe this will happen in their lifetimes, they genuinely fear Europe.

[kangnamdragon]

[pollyplummer]

I am an American right-winger. I don't hate Europe, nor do I fear it. I've lived in Europe and it feels nothing like home, but I don't despise their way of life. European politics are more complex than I realized before. They all have many close neighbors and there isn't one European nation that has the population/military strength to hold up alone in a major conflict. They must rely on their neighbors and be very diplomatic. They just have to. I can understand them, but I don't idealize them. Maybe other right-wingers hate Europe, but I don't personally know any. Can we hear from some? What are your thoughts? uh... are there any others?

[funplanet]

I agree with Polly for the most part...few so-called "right-wingers" hate Europe...it's just that Europe doesn't stand for much except appeasement..no frontier can do spirit, empty churches (worship the state rather than God), too much regulation (my God, do they really need an 800 page plus constitution???) and is it necessary to regulate the size of condoms and eggplants???, too much faith in the state and not the person, and on and on....

There is a New Europe and that's the Europe I support....the Old Europe has grown old and tired, time for them to move aside and let the New Europe lead the way....new EU capital? how about Prague or Warsaw?? I hope to see the frontier spirit that the Czechs, Poles, Estonians, etc have lead the way both politically and economically and spiritually....

[Alias]

[Alias]