Another Dark View of the Euro-American Dialogue...

… by Janet Daley is closer to Steyn than Bay (see below) and contains the following:

But whatever it is, it no longer has a belief in real democracy of the kind that Americans recognise – government of the people, by the people and for the people – at its heart.

That is why Jacques Chirac – the very embodiment of corrupt European political cynicism – and George Bush can never, ever find true common ground. When the President tries to give credit where it is due – to the European authorship of democratic revolution – it sounds faintly sarcastic.

I have written before on this page that European hatred of the United States has a great deal to do with jealousy of American self-belief. But there is an element of shame there, too. Because Europe knows that it has sold the pass. It has traded liberty for security: the safety of consensus, the reassuring unfreedom of bureaucratic control and an over-regulated economy.

American talk about spreading freedom is not just gauche; it is a reproach.

Is this only about the Frano-German axis? I’m afraid not. You would certainly have to Spain into the bargain… and then much of Scandinavia… and so it goes.