Category Europe

Entries 2 Total

WTF?!

Nov 4, ’04 11:44 PM

Just what the hell is this supposed to mean? In a Post article about the dismay with which George Bush’s re-election is being greeted around the world:

“America has missed a great chance to reunite with the world,” said Graham Allen, a member of the British Parliament from the ruling Labor Party. “I fear the tragedy for all of us is that if America doesn’t reach out to its friends, then its enemies will reach out to America.”

Is he saying that a failure of the United States to bow to the will of its ‘friends’ — by which, I presume, he means the throbbing socialist proto-empire in Europe — the U.S. will be attacked by Arab terrorists? Does he mean to imply that Europe is able to influence whether violent attacks on the United States and on American interests will take place?

It’s a mistake to read too much into the bluster of a politician, but what people say in unguarded moments can be telling; and this seems to suggest that Graham Allen, at least, shares my view that the real nature of our current conflict involves the EU and the terrorists on, ultimately, the same side against the United States.

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A Good Thing About Europe

Jul 22, ’03 10:24 PM

It’s no secret that I am deeply skeptical about the European Union. It looks to me like a nascent Fascist state, and frankly it scares the bejeesus out of me.

It’s not without its good features, though, as this article in the Washington Post reminds us. The absence of border controls and work restrictions for citizens of ‘foreign’ EU member states is definitely a step forward.

[25-year-old Swede Stina] Lunden is part of the new “Generation E” — E for Europe, a continent that has been essentially without borders for most of Lunden’s and her peers’ adult lives. For them, traveling from Sweden to Spain is about as simple as it is for an American college student to take a spring break drive from the Northeast to Florida.

Of course, once they’re in the USA, it’s as simple for Lunden and the rest of Generation E to take a drive from the Northeast to Florida as it is for that American college student, while the American travelling in Europe needs to keep his passport handy. Admittedly, though, travellers from some parts of the EU need to screw around with visas before coming to the United States, so I suppose we’re even.

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