Explaining Europe
From Janet Daley's excellent essay "Freedom? Why Europe's not bothered," published yesterday in the London Telegraph:
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.