Somethign for the America bashers

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cardosino

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Something for the America bashers

[Fwd: FW: An Open Letter to Europe]

Hi. Are you nuts?

Forgive me for being so blunt, but your reaction to our reelection of

President Bush has been so outrageous that I'm wondering if you have quite

literally lost your minds. One of Britain's largest newspapers ran a

headline asking "How Can 59 Million Americans Be So Dumb?", and
commentators

in France all seemed to use the same word - bizarre -- to explain the

election's outcome to their readers. In Germany the editors of Die

Tageszeitung responded to our vote by writing that "Bush belongs at a war

tribunal - not in the White House." And on a London radio talk show last

week one Jeremy Hardy described our President and those of us who voted for

him as "stupid, crazy, ignorant, bellicose Christian fundamentalists."



Of course, you are entitled to whatever views about us that you care
to

hold. (And lucky for you we Americans aren't like so many of the Muslims
on

your own continent; as the late Dutch film maker Theo van Gogh just

discovered, make one nasty crack about them and you're likely to get six

bullets pumped into your head and a knife plunged into your chest.) But

before you write us off as just a bunch of sweaty, hairy-chested,

Bible-thumping morons who are more likely to break their fast by dipping a

Krispy Kreme into a diet cola than a biscotti into an espresso - and who

inexplicably have won more Nobel prizes than all other countries combined,

host 25 or 30 of the world's finest universities and five or six of the

world's best symphonies, produce wines that win prizes at your own tasting

competitions, have built the world's most vibrant economy, are the world's

only military superpower and, so to speak in our spare time, have landed
on

the moon and sent our robots to Mars - may I suggest you stop frothing at

the mouth long enough to consider just what are these ideas we hold that
you

find so silly and repugnant?



We believe that church and state should be separate, but that
religion

should remain at the center of life. We are a Judeo-Christian culture,

which means we consider those ten things on a tablet to be commandments,
not

suggestions. We believe that individuals are more important than groups,

that families are more important than governments, that children should be

raised by their parents rather than by the State, and that marriage should

take place only between a man and a woman. We believe that rights must be

balanced by responsibilities, that personal freedom is a privilege we must

be careful not to abuse, and that the rule of law cannot be set aside when

it becomes inconvenient. We believe in economic liberty, and in the right

of purposeful and industrious entrepreneurs to run their businesses - and

thus create jobs - with a minimum of government interference. We
recognize

that other people see things differently, and we are tolerant of their

views. But we believe that our country is worth defending, and if anyone

decides that killing us is an okay thing to do we will go after them with

everything we've got.



If these beliefs seem strange to you, they shouldn't. For these are

precisely the beliefs that powered Western Europe - you -- from the Middle

Ages into the Renaissance, on to the Enlightenment, and forward into the

modern world. They are the beliefs that made Europe itself the glory of

Western civilization and - not coincidentally - ignited the greatest

outpouring of art, literature, music and scientific discovery the world
has

ever known including Michaelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Shakespeare, Bach,

Issac Newton and Descartes.



Europe is Dying



It is your abandonment of these beliefs that has created the gap
between

Europe and the United States. You have ceased to be a Judeo-Christian

culture, and have become instead a secular culture. And a secular culture

quickly goes from being "un-religious" to anti-religious. Indeed, your

hostility to the basic concepts of Judaism and Christianity has literally

been written into your new European Union constitution, despite the Pope's

heroic efforts to the contrary.



Your rate of marriage is at an all-time low, and the number of
abortions

in Europe is at an all-time high. Indeed, your birth rates are so far
below

replacement levels that in 30 years or so there will be 70 million fewer

Europeans alive than are alive today. Europe is literally dying. And of

the children you do manage to produce, all too few will be raised in
stable,

two-parent households.



Your economy is stagnant because your government regulators make it
just

about impossible for your entrepreneurs to succeed - except by fleeing to

the United States, where we welcome them and celebrate their success.



And your armed forces are a joke. With the notable exception of
Great

Britain, you no longer have the military strength to defend yourselves.

Alas, you no longer have the will to defend yourselves.



What worries me even more than all this is your willful blindness.
You

refuse to see that it is you, not we Americans, who have abandoned Western

Civilization. It's worrisome because, to tell you the truth, we need each

other. Western Civilization today is under siege, from radical Islam on
the

outside and from our own selfish hedonism within. It's going to take all
of

our effort, our talent, our creativity and, above all, our will to pull

through. So take a good, hard look at yourselves and see what your own

future will be if you don't change course. And please, stop sneering at

America long enough to understand it. After all, Western Civilization was

your gift to us, and you ought to be proud of what we Americans have made
of
it.


Herbert E. Meyer
 
Any chance you could include a U2 connection, otherwise this post doesn't belong in this particular forum, try FYM or LS?
 
ramblin rose said:
Any chance you could include a U2 connection, otherwise this post doesn't belong in this particular forum, try FYM or LS?

Sure. Some U2 members own homes in both parts of the world.
 
Well to quote the great Edmund Blackadder:

"Yes. Well, it started badly, it tailed off a little in the middle, and the less said about the end, the better. But, apart from that, excellent."
 
DrTeeth said:
Well to quote the great Edmund Blackadder:

"Yes. Well, it started badly, it tailed off a little in the middle, and the less said about the end, the better. But, apart than that, excellent."

:laugh:
 
I don't agree with this article and I am from the U.S. I don't think Europe is dying or going to hell in a haybasket. The article strikes me as being rather arrogant and lacking historical perspective. What about the intellectual life that brought on the Renaissance? I killed myself in school writing papers about High Medieval scholars like Abelard and Aquinas who gave us the great medieval universities. Sure, it was founded on commerce and trade and prosperity, but it wouldn't have existed without the scholars, and all of this stuff is still flourishing in Europe. I don't see the guy's point.
 
Next time you decide to go ahead and post an e-mail forward with nothing original or coherent of your own to add, could you at least format it nicely so it's easier to read? :|
 
howsmart.jpg
 
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