History definitely isn’t over.
We’re living in one of the most fascinating–and troubling–moments since the dawn of the notion that there was some such entity as Europe.
I refer, of course, to the new reality engendered by the Spanish election.
Here’s what historian Victor Davis Hanson said about the election in an interview with Front Page magazine:
“Worse, this was not panic from a fickle leader but an overwhelming expression of public fear and intimidation. I am afraid it confirms what most of us have thought for some time about the Europeans: they want our bases and troops, but only in the shadows and with avenues of distance and denial, as a last guarantee only of their safety in extremis. I wish the Spanish had voted to expel our soldiers as well–but perhaps that will be in the next terrorist demand. And note that the Greeks, who slurred NATO in the Balkans, did nothing for it in Aghanistan, and trashed the US over Iraq, find a bomb at a Citibank office and suddenly are talking of NATO help in their Olympic security–even as the hated Americans are offering our commandos for joint practice operations with them against potential terrorist-like incursions.
“As for Spain–and I say this with real remorse given their suffering and national catastrophe–not since Theodosius and the late Romans paid their annual bribe money to Attila have we seen such success in bullying and terrifying a Western nation. It is right off the pages of Gibbon in his discussion of how weak, wealthy, and fearful Westerners paid Goths and Huns before Adrianople and Chalons. And this is the beginning not the end of it, as we shall soon see.”