Europe.

Treasure box of civilization that every other civilization on earth, grand and small, old and new, owns a few pearls and diamonds from.

Reason, individualism, liberty, fairness and linear progress from the Judeo-Christian European heritage have affected human aspirations all over the earth – everything from Pakistani kids longing for Nikes and Iranian women demanding their human rights, to India demanding its place at the UN Security Council. All of these are derived from the heritage of reason which began in Europe.

But the LAST people who seem to be aware of this are Europeans themselves. They don’t even know who they are anymore.

Not that they aren’t arrogant jerks, they are. They just don’t know what they have a right to be an arrogant jerk about anymore. They should be arrogant jerks for their contributions to reason and logic, to science and progress, to great art and individual human achievement. But they don’t recognize that, and seem to reject it. It’s a sort of decadent boredom of idle elites who are seeking the exotic. I am always creeped out when I realize I know more about European heritage than some self-satisfied supercilious, know-nothing European. I can’t believe there are such people out there, who don’t even know the basics about where Europe came from.

They are instead arrogant about things that ought to embarass the hell out of them: That any civilization, be it Taliban or Swedish, is just as good as another. That multiculturalism and pan-Europeanism strictly from pinched little mediocre minds in dog-doo-strewn Brussels is better than any blood- and iron-forged national identity. That history doesn’t matter. That all things should be regulated by the state, as the state knows best. That unchecked immigration, with no accountability for who’s admitted, is just great. That a lack of confidence is the one and only thing to be confident about, and proof of virtue. That European history is evil and needs to be eradicated, especially stuff like Roland and El Cid and Isabelle of Castile. That appeasement of every foreign predator is ‘wisdom.’ That war, all war, is outdated and that nothing is worth fighting for. That God is dead. That the state is God. That there are no absolutes.

So it’s no wonder there are no horizons there, either. It’s all so freaking ’60s, so Beatle-y, so Sartre, so old-people-y and dreary. Thinking like that just goes to show the complete moral bankruptcy of the Eurotrash. They don’t even know who they are or where they came from. And now they are old and tired and spewing old and tired ideas that the U.S. has shunned since the Carter era.

Or is it?

There are some shifts in the wind going on in Europe, the kind that signal the shift of ideas.

Sweden’s young people have recently thrown out their socialists in favor of a center right government, the first in decades.

In France, Segolene Royal, a fairly youthful socialist leader is speaking with Tony-Blair-like free market ideas, getting vilified by the corrupt old French socialist establishment, and fighting on, undaunted, to possible victory ten months away as France’s president anyway. She seems to believe in law and order, for one, (instead of muddling things and then appeasing and hiding, liek the others) and maybe even European values.

In Italy, a real freak show of Italian government complicity with Islamofascists, under the cover of state, from the SAME government that would prosecute Oriana Fallaci for her individualist opinions, is being countered by Moderate Muslims and Pope Benedict, meeting together. The Moderate Muslims have warned the Pope that the Italian government is collaborating with Islamofascists out of fear and cowardice and asked for his help. The Pope suggested he was willing. Obviously, there are people willing to stand up for Reason. Stefania has an amazing and vivid article about this little known struggle in this post, worth reading several times over, at American Thinker here.

And back in France, Daniel of Venezuela News & Views, who is visiting the country, reports that France has ordered Turkey to acknowledge its role in the Armenian massacre or no EU membership for Turkey. And Ukraine has admitted its role in anti-Semitic massacres. Suddenly there is verifiable evil in the world, coming from tired old establishmentarians like Jacques Chirac. Daniel points out that this coincides with a European shift away from crummy leaders like Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hugo Chavez. When Europe confronts the truth, it doesn’t have time for the preening of clown dictators. It doesn’t have the stomach for it. Read it here.