self-convinced?

great letter, alexander.

i for one do not welcome our new global overlords.

 ironically, if the 60's social revolution had not been corrupted and mostly decimated, leaving us with 50's types like rummy calling the shots, i well might have.

a benign lone superpower might morph into a wise new world order, but i'm hoping the present ship-of-fools captains are a giant toxic crap about to be ejected from the colon of the body politic, leaving a mae west cleanliness....pun intended.

the swiftest, surest way to defang the mullah-whipped tsunami of religious frenzy against the west would be an attack of generosity that would show the arab peoples that our intentions really are noble.

if every time we'd dropped a cluster bomb, or irradiated unborn children into deformation with depleted uranium, instead we had offered solar panels and 12 volt well tech, hospitals, schools and infrastructure improvement, we would not have to be crowing about democracy to them as they rue the loss of basic services they enjoyed under their 2 bit tinpot throwback saddam.

they would be in a big hurry to exchange their oil so we could plane down gently into sustainability, for the tools to ensure quality of life after their own oil runs out.

and likewise they would reject shari'a law as the medieval atrocity it is, and try something better.

best of all would be if we really embodied successful democracies ourselves, instead of the present rule of corporations, whose shareholders cannot see the real world effects of their worship of bloodless numbers, and the hell it is marching the world towards.

now i'm going to bake some bread and play the baby grand, which got delivered yesterday (almost taking down the pergola on its way in!)

have a loving sunday y'all!

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

It is not just that as Westerners you have withstood -- often later at our side -- all prior challenges to the shared liberal civilization you created, whether the specter of an Ottoman global suzerainty, Bonapartism, Prussian militarism, Nazism, fascism, Japanese militarism, or Soviet Communism.

I can't help being reminded, yet again, of Thatcher's quote ("in this century, all the problems of the world have come from the continent and all the solutions from the English-speaking world"). This is a slightly wider view than this century, as it includes Napoleon, the Prussians, the Ottomans and the Japanese, but it's in the same vein. Napoleon (or the Prussians, for that matter) as a threat to "liberal civilisation" is a somewhat partial view, but no matter. Maybe what's more interesting is what's missing in that list, things like colonialism, the massacres of indigenous people, and, inside our countries, reactionary forces...

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 Min City, or Lima. For millions of Americans "Eurocentric" is no slur -- for it is an appellation of shared values and ideas not of race.

Even in this debased era of multiculturalism that misleads our youth into thinking no culture can be worse than the West, we all know in our hearts the truth that we live by and the lie that we profess -- that the critic of the West would rather have his heart repaired in Berlin than in Guatemala or be a Muslim in Paris rather than a Christian in Riyadh, or a woman or homosexual in Amsterdam than in Iran, or run a newspaper in Stockholm rather than in Havana, or drink the water in Luxembourg rather than in Uganda, or object to his government in Italy rather than in China or North Korea. Radical Muslims damn Europe and praise Allah -- but whenever possible from Europe rather than inside Libya, Syria, or Iran.

Yes, we're still (barely) prosperous democracies. Thanks...

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.

"Hey, kid, it's nice to want to grow up, but you're still too young, and you wil lalways be. Don't try to behavelike an adult because it's ridiculous."

Yeah, if anybody that criticises you is - sadly, of course - dismissed as an "angry and envious inferior", it's easy to say that you favor democracy and debate. Only words of agreement will be deemed to come from "proud partners"...

Even in this era of crisis, we cling to the notion that in the eleventh hour you, Europe, will yet reawake, rediscover your heritage, and join with us in defending the idea of the West from this latest illiberal scourge of Islamic fascism.

As you say, it's just the latest illiberal scourge. Why throw all our values overboard to fight this one? Or is the goal something else?

For just once, if only for the purpose of theatrics, we would like to urge calm and restraint to a Europe angry, volatile, and threatening, in the face of blackmail and taunts from a third-rate theocracy in Tehran -- or a two-bit fascist thug fomenting hate and violence from a state-subsidized mosque in a European suburb.

Why exactly should we get angry and threatening about a "third rate" theocracy, or "thugs"? That's what diplomats and the police are for, you know - functions invented even before our common ancestors you are so proud of, and that have passed the test of history and, guess what, are still around...

Alas, recently, Europeans have been taken hostage on the West Bank, Yemen, and Iraq. All have been released. There are two constants in the stories: Some sort of blackmail was no doubt involved (either cash payments or the release of terrorist killers in European jails?), and the captives often seem to praise the moderation of their captors. Is this an aberration or indicative of a deeper continental malady? Few, in either a private or public fashion, suggested that such bribery only perpetuates the kidnapping of innocents and provides cash infusions to terrorists to further their mayhem.

Yes, let's mix up totally unrelated cases (except for the fact that they are Muslim). Why no mention of Colombia then? Or of Abu Ghraib? And what "terrorist killers" have been released from European jails outside of normal judicial procedures?

On the home front, a single, though bloody, attack in Madrid changed an entire Spanish election, and prompted the withdrawal of troops from Iraq -- although the terrorists nevertheless continued, despite their promises to the contrary, to plant bombs and plan assassinations of Spanish judicial officials. Cry the beloved continent.

Yeah, right, cling to your version that the election was about the terrorist threat, and not about the lies of the Aznar government.

 Indeed, so far has global culture devolved in caving to Islamism that we fear that only two places in the world are now safe for a Jew to live in safety -- and Europe, the graveyard of 20th-century Jewry, is tragically not among them. Cry the beloved continent.

Again, the casual accusation of anti-semitism, en passant.

Your idealistic approach to health care, transportation, global warming, and entitlements have won over much of coastal and blue America, who, if given their way, would replicate here what you have there. Yet the worry grows that none of this vision of your anointed is sustainable -- given an aging and shrinking population, growing and unassimilated minority populations, flat growth rates, increasing statism, and high unemployment.

Just to note your ignorance of math: China also has a "flat" growth rate (i.e. constant). You probably meant to say "flat GDP" for Europe? Which is by the way false, as the eurozone (which is what I presume you mean when you say the "continent"?) has had similar growth per capita, and higher jobs growth than the US since 1995. (And unemployment has been going down)

If America, the former British commonwealth, India, and China, embraced globalization, while the Arab Middle East rejected it, you sought a third way of insulating yourselves from it -- and now are beginning to pay for trying to legislate and control what is well beyond your ability to do either.

Yep, the UK and the British Commonwealth are definitely not part of what you call Europe.

Worse, in the meantime you lost the goodwill of the United States, which you demonized, I think, on the understanding that there would never be real repercussions to your flamboyant venom.

Who demonised who, exactly?

The Balkan massacres proved that a mass murderer like Slobodan Milosevic could operate with impunity in Europe until removed by the intervention of the United States. And yet from that gruesome lesson, in retrospect we over here have learned only two things: The Holocaust would have gone on unabated hours from Paris and Berlin without the leadership of United States, and in this era of the Chirac/Schroeder ingratitude the American public would never sanction such help to you again.

The Holocaust DID go on unabated until the very end, despite the USA being fully aware of what was going on.

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.

And we do not wish you well in your faith that war is necessary and that the international jurisprudence that was born and is nurtured thanks to the inspired and at times selfless leadership of the USA is now worthless.

Old Europe has neither the will nor the power to protect the ascending democracies of Eastern Europe, much less the republics of the former Soviet Union from present Russian bullying -- and perhaps worse to come.

So we've switched to "Old Europe" now... I won't comment on "Russian bullying", but the EU is certainly playing as big a role as NATO in whatever conflict there are (actually, I'd be genuinely interested to know haw this is seen from Russia)

You will, of course, answer that in your postwar wisdom you have transcended the internecine killing of the earlier 20th century when nationalism and militarism ruined your continent -- and that you have lent your insight to the world at large that should follow your therapeutic creed rather than the tragic vision of the United States.

Heh. Thanks for putting it so well.

A European Union that facilitates trade, finance, and commerce can enrich and ennoble your continent, but it need not suppress the unique language, character, and customs of European nationhood itself, much less abdicate a heritage that once not merely moralized about, but took action to end, evil.

Free trade = good. Political union = bad.

Where have I heard this before. But you want us as a "proud partner", don't you? How can we be a partner if we don't speak with one voice?

The world is becoming a more dangerous place, despite your new protocols of childlessness, pacifism, socialism, and hedonism.

You find beautifully turned phrases, I have to grant you that.

So criticize us for our sins; lend us your advice; impart to America the wealth of your greater experience -- but as a partner and an equal in a war, not as an inferior or envious neutral on the sidelines. History is unforgiving. None of us receives exemption simply by reason of the fumes of past glory.

You should listen to your own advice a little bit more. We HAVE "lent you our advice" and "imparted the wealth of our greater experience", and YOU have chosen to dismiss it as coming from an "envious inferior". And just as you say, you will not receive an exemption by reason of past glory: just because you were mostly the "good guys" (and then again, not the only ones) during WWII does not mean that you still are them today.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

Pax

Night and day you can find me Flogging the Simian

Yes, it is kind of strange that you should wish us to fulfill our aspirations.

the growth of the US economy, built on ever more precarious financial bubbles, a mountain of debt and the pawning off of the family silver,

Add.: ...and the massaging of statistics and resulting comparisons of apples and oranges,...

But the thing is that many, perhaps most of us, do not see this present US venture as a conflict between a defender of Western secular ideals against the forces of religious fundamentalism, but rather as a conflict, for a number of various motives, between two parties, spurred on by twin religious fervours, neither of which carries the torch for the values of the West.

Alt.: ...but rather a conflict, for a number of various motives, between multiple parties, spurred on by religious fervours and nationalisms, neither of which carries the torch for the values of the West - indeed your side let allies take power who fight for the very religious fundamentalism you claim the fight is against.

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

"Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason."  

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'Sapere aude'

What is not captured here is the broad exasperation with Europe that seems to be the general mood in America today. Most Americans have their cultural roots in Europe and want to see Europe in a positive light. And most Americans are not happy with the situation in Iraq, and how we got to where we are.

But I do not think that there would be much complaining at all here if we were to close down our European military bases, withdraw from NATO, not worry about Iran or Palestine or Turkey, and just hunker down over on our side of the pond. There is a strong isolationist tendency in America; the same one that caused us to not ratify the Treaty of Versailles, nor join the League of Nations or the International Court of Justice after the first world war, and that kept us out of the second world war for four years. It's not completely disappeared.

It sure would be nice if we could all manage to elect cooperative leadership.

On the home front, a single, though bloody, attack in Madrid changed an entire Spanish election, and prompted the withdrawal of troops from Iraq