… should be required weekly reading.
I’m sure that the Europeans are light-years ahead of us in the use of
public transportation. They probably are wiser in their per-capita
energy utilization, and their primary and secondary education may be
superior. But there is also something of Calypso’s island about them.
For all their professed enjoyment of food, shelter, and lovemaking,
the Europeans are bored silly with their listless routine and are
increasingly timid — this from a great people who should not, but
really do, live in terror of their own past. Like Odysseus in his
comfy subservience to Calypso, these mesmerized and complacent
sensualists sometimes contemplate leaving the comfort of their
fairyland atoll and in boredom weep nightly, gazing out at the
seashore. But as yet they lack the hero’s courage to finally build a
raft and sail rough seas to confront suitors who are trying to crash
their civilization.
This war would be over far sooner if 350 million Europeans insisted on
a modicum of behavior from Middle Eastern rogue regimes, rounded up
and tried terrorists in their midst, deported islamofascists, cut off
funding to killers on the West Bank, ignored Yasser Arafat — and
warned the next SOB who blew up Europeans in Turkey, North Africa, or
Iraq that there was a deadly reckoning to come from the continent that
invented the Western military tradition. Indeed, European
sophistication and experience, combined with real power, could be a
great aid to the West in its effort to promote liberal and consensual
governments outside its shores. But if they do not even believe in the
unique legacy of their civilization, then why should we — much less
their enemies?