The West Has Never Been One

Michael Totten’s first
essay for the new centrist blog Donkelephant is a winner. I believe a good
bit of the left vs. right conflict would be tempered by a better recall of what
I call "true history" (distinct from "media history" which
is evidently what they teach at the Columbia School of Journalism). True history
is what Michael supplies here -certainly another read-the-whole-thing item -
including the associated comments:

On September 11, 2001, and for a period
shortly thereafter, the United States felt like one unified country for the
first time in my life. Of course there were cranks on the left- and right-wing
fringes who felt America had “asked” to
be terrorized, who thought pacifism or isolationism were the answer to
the worst attack on our own soil in history. But they were as far away from
the political center as they could be. The center, on September 11, was hundreds
of millions of people in size.

I had spent my entire adulthood rather far from the political center, on
the left. But once the center moved dramatically leftward and swept me up
in it, I decided things were better there. No longer was I a political minority
railing at the majority. Those who did continue to rail at the majority – the
Noam Chomskys and Jerry Falwells – clearly were lunatics. Those on
both the center-left and the center-right were my political friends, so to
speak, and I decided it needed to stay that way.

The minute regime-change in Iraq was placed on the table the political center
imploded. It just couldn’t hold. Perhaps that’s natural when we’re
not actively under attack in real time. But I’ve felt ill at ease since
it happened. In The Art of War Sun Tzu said, when describing ways to defeat
an enemy: “When he is united, divide him.” We have become divided,
and we’ve become divided in war time. Al Qaeda did not do this to us.
We did this to ourselves.

Also worrying is how Western Civilization is divided against itself. Many
Europeans and Americans are not even on speaking terms these days. France
is the favorite Western punching bag of even many liberal Americans – and
many Europeans as well when they aren’t trashing the United States as the
new evil imperialist Empire. Anti-Americanism in Western Europe often goes
well beyond mere criticism and ventures deep into the territory of vituperative
hate-mongering. And it has been matched by a nascent and often nasty anti-Europeanism
in the United States. It’s sad. We are all threatened by totalitarian
Islamists. How to best respond to that threat is precisely where our intra-Western
battle lines are drawn.

It’s nothing new, though. Somehow many (most?) Americans have come to
believe that European countries are supposed to be our allies now because they
were always our allies in the past. Anguished cries, mostly from the liberal
left, that “we must not alienate Europe” have become a common refrain
ever since September 11. I think I understand where this sentiment comes from.
The center in Western politics is a dangerous gaping void, and it’s
a dangerous gaping void during war time. Reaching out to Europe, and chastising
those who refuse to do so, is an honorable attempt at seeking the center
just as I seek the center myself in the United States.

The problem is that not all Europeans are our natural allies. We may
wish they were and imagine they are, but some of them just aren’t.
Many are old enemies. Many were enemies not in ancient history but within
living memory…

Another good commentary on the "true history" of Europe and the
Anglosphere is the
Transatlantic Intelligencer.