Airstrip One

L'ennemi américaine

It is galling, when one argues for a rational analysis of the current international crises, to see that some European columnists are willing to live down to the stereotypes conjured up by the dhimmi brigade and the Eurabians.

What unsettles me even more is the crop of books studying or promoting anti-Americanism that have recently sold well in France: L’obsession anti-américaine by Jean-François Revel; Après l’empire by Emmanuel Todd and L’ennemi américaine by Philippe Roger.

Revel is a well-known conservative who has publicised many of the concerns about the fallacies of the left. A conversation between Revel and Todd revealed that the latter sociologist saw American actions as a sign of weakness rather than strength and that the "real strategic threat [to America], ...is that a nuclear Russia would ally itself with the two most important real power centers outside the United States, which are Europe and Japan".

Even an Arab writer noticed that Todd was the most enthusiastic of all the anti-American authors quoted, (along with the irrelevant and predictable aside on how well-represented the Jews are in France).

The US has sat up and noticed this surge of movement amongst French intellectuals. A forthcoming article by David Pryce-Jones in the National Review will review the books by Revel and Roger and has concluded

that anti-Americanism is not related to whatever the United States might actually be or do, but reflects murky depths of the French psyche. Persistent divisiveness and repeated social failure, general loss of influence in the world and injured pride, have solidified into an inferiority complex. Taking it for granted that France ought to be the world's leading power, French intellectuals have long been accustomed to seeing America as a standing reproach. As Philippe Roger puts it, hatred of America is nourished on a "violent contempt of oneself."

Some of the French intellectuals say that the United States acts out of weakness rather than strength due to fiscal and societal weaknesses. Others state that their own anti-Americanism is a sign of weakness rather than strength, a symptom of jealousy as they can no longer aspire to be top dog.

What I find unsettling is how France and, by extension, Europe are drowning in their own irrelevance and sleepwalking to possible disaster without getting a grip on the strategic realities that confront them. All of their skills in co-operation, mediation and negotiation will not save them from blackmail by missile toting states along their borders in the next decade. Do they dream of decadence?

I Know It's Off-topic, but I Cannot Sit Back and Watch Britain Become a Laughing-stock.<b> 31st October, 2002.

I note with utter HORROR that Princess Diana is currently top of the 100 Greatest Britons list. I implore you all to go to the B.B.C.'s web-site now & register your vote for a serious candidate -

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/programmes/greatbritons/

I have just voted for Shakespeare.

You may think the whole thing beneath your notice, but please imagine the hay that Britain-haters will be able to make if a nonentity like Diana tops the list, ahead of great dead white males of the likes of Shakespeare, Newton, Churchill, & Nelson. I can already hear the bleating about how the national consciousness has changed, about how, thanks to feminism, we now consider "compassion" more important than talent or leadership or any kind of achievement; I can already read the columns droning on about how the old heroes no longer count in this new, young, vibrant, multicultural country - I can already feel myself puking. WE CANNOT LET THIS HAPPEN. Let's show these scum that Britain still knows herself.

Jumping the Gun

D'Estaing may have miscalculated the strength of federalist feeling in the European Convention when publishing the draft of the Constitution. The document's inclusion of defence has received a negative response in Finland. In Ireland, Mr Proinsias De Rossa, Dublin MEP mooted that "that Mr Giscard was primarily interested in a congress as a vehicle for his own self-aggrandisement". No. 10's response was supportive and bland, despite press spin to show an edge of opposition.

The Press have concentrated on various aspects: the Presidency, the Congress of the Peoples of Europe, the right to withdraw, common citizenship and the common defence policy. Other important headings in the document that have not been emphasised concern: 'constructive abstentionism'; the suspension of membership; the administration of "certain competences on a federal basis"; and, the laughable injunction for the Union "to provide and promote open, effective and unostentatious administration";

Worrying aspects are the promotion of common defence, security and foreign policies; of common police and crime policies; and that "the Union budget is financed by own resources and sets out the procedure for establishing system of own resources" - the power to set taxes in EUspeak, although it has to be a balanced budget.

The whole document can be read here, and whilst it is dull, is worth examining (It is in pdf format).

We must never be isolated in Europe

No Longer.

Foreign Travel & the Social Contract 28th October, 2002.

I don't suppose Hobbes, Locke, or Rousseau ever expected to see that as a title.

Messrs Carr & Goldstein have been arguing over how much protection Britannia should accord her subjects overseas. Mr Carr says, "A lot," Comrade Goldstein, as you would expect, "Sweet F.A." (or thereabouts). In the course of the argument, Mr Carr has invoked the social contract between the state & the subject, declaring that the state is breaking its terms if it fails to do everything reasonable to protect its subjects abroad. He has also implied that the social contract is a Tory idea, & this Cde Goldstein has pooh-poohed.

On this last point, Cde Goldstein is certainly right. Burke spoke of a "partnership between the dead, the living, & those yet to be born" (I misquote from memory), but that is not the same as a contract, & Hume was famously contemptuous of the theory. If any single idea encapsulates better the difference between liberalism & conservatism, I should be pleased to hear about it. We all know that the social contract is not to be taken literally, that it is an implied contract, but not even an implied contract makes sense unless there are parties to that contract who could in principle have opted not to agree to it - & that is precisely what a conservative will not allow, on the grounds that individuals are inconceivable in any sense prior to the society in which they exist. For a liberal, society is composed of individuals & exists to serve their ends, rather as a business exists to serve shareholders; for a Tory, society is an end in itself, in which, as Aristotle said, man becomes what he is meant to be - it is less like a company, & more like a family, where, leaving aside the rather inconvenient detail of the marriage contract, contracts have no place.

If a nation is like a family, then its members are no less its members for being abroad & beyond the full power of its protection. On the real point at issue, I am more in agreement with Mr Carr. The "interest" of a family is not furthered when it callously disregards the welfare of its members away from home, to the extent that people feel discouraged from leaving. At the same time, of course, individuals are responsible for their actions: the younger son who insists on frequenting the crack dens of Harlesden against parental advice cannot expect his father to interpose when his dealer turns nasty; & similarly, Britons who travel to countries in the midst of civil war have to be aware that they are taking their lives in their hands. We ought to take all reasonable steps to look after our fellow-subjects abroad, but there are obviously limits, & those limits are overreached at the cost of our fellow-subjects at home. Warnings about bombs in Bali, however, come nowhere close to those limits.