What happens when the slowest antelope is a secular Frenchman?
Steyn on the European leaders and Bush:
They knew Bush wasn’t talking about anti-Semitism in Nebraska, but about France, where for three years there’s been a sustained campaign of synagogue burning and cemetery desecration, and Germany, where the Berlin police advise Jewish residents not to go out in public wearing any identifying marks of their faith…..
The president, in other words, understands that for Europe, unlike America, the war on terror is an internal affair, a matter of defusing large unassimilated radicalized Muslim immigrant populations before they provoke the inevitable resurgence of opportunist political movements feeding off old hatreds.
The French tut-tutting will cease pretty quickly when les beurs turn their gentle ministrations towards real Frenchmen, as opposed to those who may have relatives in that “sh***y little country.” And the Germans, well, they have quite a little history in these matters.
On a lighter note, Styen skewers Giscard on the silly EU “constitution.”
I had the opportunity to talk with former French President Valery Giscard d’Estaing on a couple of occasions during his long labors as the self-declared and strictly single Founding Father. He called himself ”Europe’s Jefferson,” and I didn’t like to quibble that, constitution-wise, Jefferson was Europe’s Jefferson — that’s to say, at the time the U.S. Constitution was drawn up, Thomas Jefferson was living in France. Thus, for Giscard to be Europe’s Jefferson, he’d have to be in Des Moines, where he’d be doing far less damage.
You know, maybe the Euros need to learn a little of our history, rather than the other way round.