Only Bush can save Europe

Mark Steyn says that the US President’s ‘transformational’ response to Muslim fundamentalism can save the Old World; European ‘managerialism’ can’t

New Hampshire

Last July, speaking to the United States Congress, the only assembly on the planet in which he’s still assured of a warm reception, Tony Blair remarked: ‘As Britain knows, all predominant power seems for a time invincible but, in fact, it is transient. The question is: What do you leave behind?’

Excellent question. Britannia will never again wield the unrivalled power she enjoyed at her imperial apogee, but the Britannic inheritance endures, to one degree or another, in many of the key regional players in the world today — Australia, India, South Africa — and in dozens of island statelets from the Caribbean to the Pacific. If China ever takes its place as an advanced nation, it will be because the People’s Republic learns more from British Hong Kong than Hong Kong learns from the Little Red Book.