September 5, 2004

EUROPE HAS MOVED ON ANYWAY:

On outside looking in, world talks about Bush (Patrick E. Tyler, September 04, 2004, NY Times)

It's as if the whole world were voting in the American election as pundits, politicians and average blokes on street corners around the world took sides on Friday at the close of the Republican National Convention.

One commentator writing in The Guardian newspaper here called it "a world election in which the world has no vote." But the world had plenty to say as the echoes of President George W. Bush's acceptance speech brought down a nimbus of celebratory kitsch from the rafters of Madison Square Garden. "Four more years of Bush," opined Der Standard, Austria's leading newspaper, as if it was already a fact.

"For almost all Europeans, this is a very unpleasant idea, but we should get used to it," the paper's editorialists admonished.

The reason, they said, was that "despite all his flaws, he comes over as a strong leader and John F. Kerry doesn't."

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 5, 2004 3:18 PM
Comments

Old Europe has to get used to the fact that it is increasingly irrelevant. It is a smaller percentage of world GDP, a smaller percentage of the world's military power, and has negative real economic growth.

If Europe were such a fount of wisdom, why did so many of its people flee here? Why is so much of its money invested here? What continent was it again where those world wars started? Which continent's inhabitants decided to march all over the world killing and enslaving people as they went, destroying local cultures and looting local communities?

Europe has bigger problems than its dyspepsia with the US. The median age of the population of EU member states in 2025 will be 52. And a large percentage of those under 52 will be Muslims who have utterly refused to assimilate. The most common boy's name in Amsterdam is Muhammad. In a generation it is far from unlikely that in the most sclerotic parts of Old Europe like Wallonia, there will be an attempt to impose Shari'a.

Posted by: Bart at September 5, 2004 3:50 PM
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