Decent column by Jonah Goldberg on Britain's recent (i.e. the last several years) "wobblying". Perhaps even more interesting is a response he received from a European:
- Perhaps the biggest wrong we Europeans have done to the native peoples of the American continent since that Italian man mistook them for Indians is that we have spent nearly 500 years dumping our trash in their back yard. We have booted out our misfits and rejects, our religious bigots and everything we had that was violent, agressive, intolerant or beligerent. If you sent only brown-eyed people to a remote location and they reproduced among themselves, how may blue-eyed people do you think there would be in that population 500 years later? Therein lies the fundamental difference between the civilization that has developed on the American continent and our European civilization. You use a couple of our languages, after a fashion, but that is all. That is probably the kind of thinking that underlay the OU motion and, yes, I think you're right, it is a setup!
A few "American" jokes for you.
1. They warned Columbus that if he sailed out too far to the west it would lead to disaster. Well, he did. And it has!
2. American: "I feel very lucky that I don't live in Europe."
European: "Me too!. I also feel very lucky that you don't live in Europe."
Look, I've spent over three years of my life in Europe, and there's a ton that I love about it. But the Europe of today is not the Europe of the past, in many ways. And I'm sick and tired of Europeans forgetting where the two worst wars in world history began, who began them, and who it was who was instrumental in ending them.
I'm sure some Europeans are tired of Americans pointing out that we saved their butts from totalitarianism, but as long as they keep throwing out inane comments like these, some of us will keep reminding them of recent history (funny, I thought it was Americans who had short memories).