Radical moderate — I agree with you regarding teh fact that NATO allows the US to subsidize Europe’s welfare state. Watching the opera buffa earlier this year over first the Kosovo independence matter and second the Georgia crisis, I came away thinking — it is time to get out of NATO. NATO is the poster child for government programs, it is still around even though the reason for its existence (the USSR) no longer exists. Russia is not the USSR, Russian nationalism is not Bolshevism.
As for the rest of the comments, Mr. Bawer has made it clear in I think most of his writings that his move to Europe was primarily due to his sexual preference. Personally, if I were gay, I would prefer New York to Norway, but so be it. He has never stuck me as a “citizen of the world” type. I actually will be moving to Europe next summer for an extended work assignment — I will still consider myself American
As for lamenting the pasisng of an old America, that is a normal aspect of getting older. I used to laugh at my parents complaining about the old America being gone, and they grew up in poor, immigrant households during the Depression and WWII. Yet, entering my forties, I too find myself lamenting the passing of what I think of as America. It is natural. I think in Mr. Bawer’s case, living abroad, it is just more pointed a feeling, given that he feels the shock of the unfamiliar whenever he returns home.
