VDH: Eurospeak
Charles Johnson
Fri Mar 4, 2005 at 9:10 am PST • Views: 187
Victor Davis Hanson puts the President’s trip to Europe in perspective, with the sub-headline, “Sorting out the teenage sass:” Eurospeak.
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.
Frank says: