Glenn Reynolds and Europe
Glenn Reynolds is having one of his anti-European spells. [See the links below, which I'm adding as the posts go up, one every couple of hours, at the moment; headlines are mine.] Don't get me wrong: the French, Germans and Italians are cowards when they're not fascists, the English have bad teeth, and don't even get me started on the Belgians. But all this warblogger whinging is getting on my nerves. We're so misunderstood. They're so ungrateful. Don't they remember how we saved them in the Second World War? Homicidal cowboys, us? Feisty libertarian pundits are supposed to be, um, feisty. Glenn Reynolds, when he gets on to the subject of European criticism of the US, sounds like Al Gore, in mid-indignation. No, that's not a compliment.
So, let's get things straight. The Europeans act out of perverted national interest. Yes, they're terrible hypocrites -- much like the US on free trade and democratic reform. They sneer at George Bush and the dumb ugly Americans whom one can spot at 500 meters on a Florence street. Sometimes -- oh, the horror -- you have to play nice to get them to do what you want. Suck it up; this is the price of being the world's pre-eminent power.
The US, out of some mixture of innate confidence, and humility after Vietnam, used to ignore the sniping. Bush -- snubbing Gerhard Schroder -- and Reynolds -- who'd snub the whole lot of them if he had the opportunity -- make America seem smaller than it is. An expensive mistake European anti-Americanism The future of Europe A brutal blow The German disaster#
