Happily my Outrage Outage didn’t last long. Thanks, Robert Kaplan! Your Atlantic column on the fall of the Berlin Wall proved a most adequate tonic. You conclude your piece:
What does the European Union truly stand for besides a cradle-to-grave social welfare system? For without something to struggle for, there can be no civil society—only decadence.
Well! It’s almost as though Kaplan thinks more wars are a good thing! Without them, after all, there is the terrifying prospect of lapsing into – gosh! – decadence.Thus, with their patriotism dissipated, European governments can no longer ask for sacrifices from their populations when it comes to questions of peace and war. Ironically, we may have gained victory in the Cold War, but lost Europe in the process.
Now besides a “cradle-to-grave social welfare system” I’d say that the EU stands for, or at least has ambitions towards, peace and prosperity and that, whatever one may think of the organisation, these are hardly small things.
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