EUROPEAN DREAMS

A Jeremy Rifkin has just written a rather hilarious book called "The European Dream: How Europe's Vision of the Future is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream". It is amusingly demolished here.

And also here. Excerpt: "Professional worrier Jeremy Rifkin's pronouncements always remind me of the characterization by one-time Speaker of the House of Representatives Thomas B. Reed of his political opponents, 'They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge.' Rifkin's assertion that Americans' consumption of beef causes domestic violence were absurd. So were his claims that biotechnology threatens 'a form of annihilation every bit as deadly as nuclear holocaust,' and that a small-scale field trial of a gene-spliced soil bacterium could change weather patterns and disrupt air-traffic control. He's at it again in a completely different realm in a new book, 'The European Dream: How Europe's Vision of the Future Is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream' ..."

There is an article here by that learned dunce, Niall Ferguson (He thinks America should become an empire!) which argues that recent Anglo/American co-operation (e.g. Reagan/Thatcher and Blair/Bush) is somehow an aberration that must soon end. He says that Britain has more in common with Europe. He notes that, like Europeans, Brits are much less religious than Americans are -- but that seems to be his only substantial point. Really important facts, like the abhorrence most Britons have of the EU, he overlooks. And on the cultural affinities that will continue to bind Britons and Americans, I can do no better than to refer readers to the Anglosphere Primer. There is a more extensive demolition of Ferguson's surprisingly ill-informed article here and other criticisms by Mark Steyn here.

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