EUROPEAN ARROGANCE AGAIN

An excerpt from THEODORE DALRYMPLE

Anyone who watched Saddam Hussein being led to the gallows without any knowledge of who he was would have concluded that a dignified, decent, and upright man was being informally executed by a gang of criminals. After all, it was he, not they, who showed his face to the world; he, not they, who refused to disguise himself.

And the revelation that he was taunted by his gaolers immediately before his execution, and not allowed to sleep the previous night, has rendered his execution less than optimal, from the public-relations point of view. Anything he might have suffered as a result of mistreatment was, of course, trivial by comparison with the suffering he inflicted on thousands, perhaps millions, of others; but a sense of proportion in moral outrage has never been among the Middle East's great cultural virtues.

The same, alas, is now true of Europe, or of the European official class and its tame intelligentsia. Everyone was agreed, of course, that Saddam was a very bad thing, a dictator who used every method of political persuasion from torture to a bullet in the neck and poison gas. But very few missed the opportunity to express an unctuous self-righteousness about the death penalty.

The editorial of Le Monde on the day following, for example, was entitled "No to the Death Penalty," and said that while President Bush may have claimed that the execution was a step on the path to democracy, "our," that is to say the French and superior, concept of democracy was different. The British foreign secretary and Irish foreign minister took the opportunity to express British and Irish opposition to the death penalty; the position of the Italian prime minister was even stronger (or weaker, depending on how you look at it); the Vatican also took the opportunity to express its opposition to the death penalty; and the European commissioner for foreign aid, M. Louis Michel, former foreign minister of that land of irreproachable integrity, Belgium, said, "You don't fight barbarism with acts that I deem as barbaric. The death penalty is not compatible with democracy."

In general, Europeans of the official class spoke as if the death penalty had been abolished in Europe in about 479 b.c., when it was abolished in Britain in 1965 and in France in 1981, not exactly historical epochs ago, even in the baby-boomers' truncated historical perspective. Whatever the practical political consequences of the execution of Saddam, which are inherently uncertain, the fact is that the European leaders are so entirely, parochially, and narrow-mindedly enclosed within their own worldview that they are now unable to conceive of any opinion but their own.

The egregious M. Michel seems to be implying that the two largest and most important democracies in the world, the U.S.A. and India, cannot actually be democracies at all because they have the death penalty. He also seems to be saying that New Zealand, Britain, Australia, Canada, and France were not democracies until 1961, 1965, 1973, 1976, and 1981, an odd reading of history, to say the least. Such is the ignorant arrogance of the great ones of Europe, who must have been confirmed in their decision not to allow any kind of democratic intervention in their deliberations by learning that in fact a clear majority of Europeans believed that Saddam ought to have been executed. If that is what people think, they clearly ought to be abolished.

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ELSEWHERE

Democrat America-hatred: "One thing that has become painfully clear in the new Congress' opening hours is that the mainstream of the Democratic Party is desperate for the Iraq war effort to fail. For those who have monitored liberalism's inner demons the past few years, this is no surprise. Every American setback has been gleefully greeted as a portentous sign of imminent disaster. Actually, every event whether a setback or not has been gleefully greeted as a portentous sign of imminent disaster. So, too, has every non-event."

Is Britain run by a deaf man? "Tony Blair has pledged to investigate the care of discharged soldiers after being challenged by a veteran of the Iraq conflict. During a televised exchange last night the Prime Minister apologised to Justin Smith after hearing that he had been left homeless and paying for medical care after two tours in Iraq. Mr Smith was discharged from the Army after suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. In the discussion, broadcast from the Royal Marines Training Centre in Lympstone, Devon, he told Mr Blair: "I have lost my house, my security, my self-belief." He had struggled to find temporary accommodation in Cornwall to be with his wife and had had to pay for some of his medical treatment. Mr Blair initially said that he could not believe that this was typical. But when members of the Royal British Legion insisted that it was, he said he would investigate." [Blair must be the only one who did not know of this problem. "The Times" and other newspapers have been highlighting it for months, if not years]

The minimum wage kills jobs in Samoa only??: "As part of their first 100 hours plan, Democrats are pushing a hike in the minimum wage. It's going to happen, with several Republicans and even President Bush prepared to go along with it. But did you know that American Samoa...a Democrat stronghold...is being exempted from the minimum wage increase?... The average wage for tuna workers in American Samoa is $3.60 an hour. One of the biggest employers there is Starkist Tuna...which is headquartered in San Francisco...Nancy Pelosi land. Anybody care to take a closer look at the campaign contributions of Democrats in the last election? One thing is for sure, the delegate from American Samoa, a Democrat, is loaded down with campaign cash from the tuna industry. So there you have it...a double standard. On the one hand, we're told you can't raise a family on $5.15 an hour and the minimum wage must be raised to $7.25 an hour. But for the right price in campaign contributions, the tuna industry in American Samoa can avoid the minimum wage altogether...they just have to stuff the pockets of the right Democrats. Where is the media on this one?"

More proof that Leftists really believe in nothing -- not even feminism: "Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) is being criticized by members of the black leadership network Project 21 for implying that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice lacks a proper perspective on the War on Terror in Iraq because she does not have children. "Barbara Boxer is a feminist who is attacking the feminist dream," said Project 21 member Kevin Martin. "But Condoleezza Rice's achievements are disqualified because she is a black conservative, and her rise was not blessed by the liberal establishment. Former attorney general Janet Reno was also unmarried and childless, but I don't remember insulting questioning like this regarding her handling of Elian Gonzalez or the deadly raid on the Branch Davidian cult."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason -- Details here and here

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