January 26, 2007
Europe defended
Timothy Garton Ash celebrates Europe (with some criticism), takes some licks at the US, and ends with a damp squib:
...Eleven of the 27 heads of government who will gather round the table at the spring European council, including the German chancellor Angela Merkel, were subjects of communist dictatorships less than 20 years ago. They know what freedom is because they know what unfreedom is...The EU is a community of law. The treaty of Rome, and succeeding treaties, have been turned into a kind of constitution by the work of European courts...Why are the leading European football teams full of players from other countries? Because of a 1995 ruling of the court of justice...
Europe is an intricate, multicoloured patchwork. Every national (and sub-national) culture has its own specialities and beauties. Each itty-bitty language reveals a subtly different way of life and thought, ripened over centuries...
...There must be no American-style, social Darwinian capitalist jungle here, with the poor and weak left to die in the gutter...
...To be poor, old and sick in Europe's wild east is no more pleasant than it is to be poor, old and sick in America's wild west...
...I love Europe. Not in the same sense that I love my family, of course; nothing compares with that. Not even in the sense that I love England, although on a rainy day it runs it close. But there is a meaningful sense in which I can say that I love Europe—in other words, that I am a European patriot...
...Europeans today are not called upon to die for Europe. Most of us are not even called upon to live for Europe. All that is required is that we should let Europe live.
...Gilles Kepel, the French scholar of Islam, once told me that when he lectures in North Africa his listeners often ask how many Muslims live in France. If he replies that he believes the official figures to be mostly correct, scornful laughter erupts. The true figure, his listeners say, is much higher. France is on its way to becoming part of the dar-al-Islam. It is leaving the dar-al-Harb (“House of War”), but without a fight...
Mark C.
Update: Hurray, We're Capitulating!
Posted by markc at January 26, 2007 06:37 PM