Unrepentant Thomas Friedman observes that it's hard to be an American in Paris these days, unless you are an anti-American American. Eu...
Unrepentant
Thomas Friedman observes that it's hard to be an American in Paris these
days, unless you are an anti-American American. Europe, he says, is the
"ultimate Blue State". Only in Iran, apparently, is the general population
looking forward to a second Bush Administration.
Watching George W. Bush's second inaugural from a bistro in Paris is like
watching the Red Sox win the World Series from a sports bar in New York City.
Odds are that someone around you is celebrating -- I mean, someone, somewhere
in Europe must be happy about this — but it's not obvious. Why are Europeans
so blue over George W. Bush's re-election? Because Europe is the world's
biggest "blue state." This whole region is a rhapsody in blue.
But European disapproval is counterpointed by the emotion of surprised
helplessness:
and then suddenly, as the truth emerged, there was a feeling of slow
resignation: 'Oh well, we've been dreaming,' " said Dominique Moisi, one of
France's top foreign policy analysts. "In fact, real America is moving away
from us. We don't share the same values." ... Moisi said. "It is not that we
are so much against America, it is that we cannot understand the evolution of
that country. This election has weakened the concept of 'the West.'
The unspoken assumption of Friedman and Moisi was that the West was authentic
only as long as it remained a development of the secular European ideologies of
the 19th and 20th centuries. For Friedman, Europe remained the ground of
Westernism; and when America and Europe diverged, it was America that had left
the 'West'. If so, the 'West' had become a museum. The
NIC
2020 report stressed that globalization had so revitalized
the world economy that 21st century modernity would
almost certainly wear a non-European face.
While today’s most advanced nations -- especially the United States -- will
remain important forces driving capital, technology and goods, globalization
is likely to take on much more of a “non-Western face” over the next 15 years.
Most of the increase in world population and consumer demand through 2020 will
take place in today’s developing nations—especially China, India, and
Indonesia—and multinational companies from today’s advanced nations will adapt
their “profiles” and business practices to the demands of these cultures. ...
Countries such as China and India will be in a position to achieve higher
economic growth than Europe and Japan, whose aging work forces may inhibit
their growth. Given its enormous population—and assuming a reasonable degree
of real currency appreciation—the dollar value of China’s gross national
product (GNP) may be the second largest in the world by 2020. For similar
reasons, the value of India’s output could match that of a large European
country. The economies of other developing countries, such as Brazil and
Indonesia, could surpass all but the largest European economies by 2020.
What Moisi should have said was 'in fact, due
to unstoppable trends the World may be moving away from us. We don't share
the same values.' Friedman's celebration of Europe as the world's largest 'Blue
State' avoids mention that it might become the world's only Blue State.
Certainly in the matter of religion, the
differential growth in populations between the Europe on the one hand, and
the Third World and even the United States on the other, is dooming 'Western'
secular atheism, and perhaps much else, to demographic extinction. Nor, with
India on track to surpass the French and German economies in size by the 2020s
is there any realistic hope of re-imposing 'Western' European values on the
benighted Red States of the world by aid packages which will by then be regarded
as chump change. It is perhaps the subconscious realization that it has awakened
to a nightmare new world that drives the the Left's incredulous reaction to
George Bush. A story on the
Kerry
Spot describing a Leftist assault on conservative protesters is provided by
Glenn
Reynolds, who describes it in terms of 'crushing free speech'. But the
real caption should be 'Nooo! It can't be!! This can't be happening!!"
Hundreds of people gathered at both ends of Meridian Hill Park in Northwest
Washington for a peace rally sponsored by the D.C Antiwar Network. But there
were interlopers: Thirteen members of ProtestWarror, supporting the Bush
administration and its policies in Iraq. When the Bush supporters arrived,
about 20 black-clad, self-described anarchists emerged from the crowd,
shouting profanity and epithets and demanding that they leave the peace rally.
When the Bush supporters refused to leave, the anarchists tore the sign out of
the Bush supporters' hands and stomped on them. When ProtestWarrior leader Gil
Kobrin objected, several male anarchists knocked him to the ground, kicking
him in the back and punching him. Other anarchists punched and shoved Kobrin's
12 colleagues.
Yet it is happening. The European ideologies of the last century have left
the stream of history and will not, cannot acknowledge it. But it is not
merely Liberalism that is unrepentant.
Austin Bay
listened to President Bush repeat the evangelical themes of his War on Terrorism
and said: faster please. "The President’s inaugural speech said in spades what I
wish he would say every day. When I returned from Iraq I said our biggest
mistake was failing to “ideologize” the war. This war is truly a fight for
the future -- a struggle between liberty and tyranny." The
Daily Demarche has a literate yet uncompromising reiteration of the same
theme: the Delaware is crossed. Fly the colors.
I have long been opposed to the phrase “War on Terror” itself. Designed to
be non-offensive to the public in general and Muslims in particular it is an
incredibly vague construct. “Terror” is not the enemy, it is the tactic. We
have, more or less, declared war on a feeling in order to spare the feelings
of a certain demographic and avoid the PC issues inherent in naming a readily
identifiable enemy. We can’t even argue that we are at war against terrorists-
we are not, after all, pursuing the Basque separatists, or Chechnyan rebels.
As was argued on this site back in November, if we are at war with anyone it
is the islamo-fscists. We need to clearly articulate who the enemy is, and
then define how we will defeat that enemy, thereby identifying an endpoint in
the “war”. ...
As the President delivers his speech at the inauguration tomorrow, and as
we enter the final countdown for the election in Iraq, we must be sure to say
what we mean, and mean what we say. This administration has been accused of
oversimplifying matters when it comes to global relations and foreign policy.
I accuse the MSM, the apologists and the anti-America crowd of obfuscating
what are simple truths: there is an enemy, the enemy can be named and must be
defeated. Islamo-fascism is our “bird”- but you can call call this flock what
you wish, the name is not important. We have all seen them at work. We all
recognize them when presented with their deeds. We all know what they want-
nothing short of the death of the West. We all know the difference between the
name of this war and the reality. The time has come to stop mincing words.
Personally I find it difficult to conceive of an enmity with Muslims in general
when it is Muslims doing the most dying on the side of freedom in Iraq. Surely
that is proof that the basic faultline is nothing so slender as the
boundary between Sunni and Shi'ite; Muslim and Jew; atheist or Christian, but
something wider still. Yet Col. Bay and the Daily Demarche are correct in insisting that the great
issues which divide the world must now be called by their proper names, although
that name is not religious war. The
listeners in Friedman's bistro would have listened to the Bush
inaugurual speech more carefully if they understood that Moisi was very near
the truth when he remarked, 'Oh well, we've been dreaming' -- a belated
realization that words taken to be empty were really uttered in earnest -- that
things had changed. Each would have listened, with fear or upliftment,
according to his gifts, as the President said:
America's vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one. From the day
of our founding, we have proclaimed that every man and woman on this earth has
rights, and dignity, and matchless value, because they bear the image of the
maker of heaven and earth. Across the generations, we have proclaimed the
imperative of self-government, because no one is fit to be a master, and no
one deserves to be a slave. Advancing these ideals is the mission that created
our nation. It is the honorable achievement of our fathers. Now it is the
urgent requirement of our nation's security, and the calling of our time. ...
We will persistently clarify the choice before every ruler and every
nation: The moral choice between oppression, which is always wrong, and
freedom, which is eternally right. America will not pretend that jailed
dissidents prefer their chains, or that women welcome humiliation and
servitude, or that any human being aspires to live at the mercy of bullies.
...
When the Declaration of Independence was first read in public and the
Liberty Bell was sounded in celebration, a witness said, "It rang as if it
meant something." In our time it means something still. America, in this young
century, proclaims liberty throughout all the world, and to all the
inhabitants thereof. Renewed in our strength tested, but not weary we are
ready for the greatest achievements in the history of freedom.
May God bless you, and may He watch over the United States of America.
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