Re: Richard Baehr's article today:

There is one more major difference between Europe and America that bears mentioning, and it has to do with the nature of the organized labor movement, which of course had tremendous effect on the working classes  in both continents.

While the early organized labor movements in both Europe and America included quite a few communists and socialists, in America that changed in the 1950's.  As America assumed the role as the Free World's defender against Soviet Communism, America's organized labor movement, the AFL-CIO, responded favorably by expelling Communists from its ranks (something that didn't happen much in Europe).  In fact, the leaders of the postwar organized labor movement, like George Meany and Lane Kirkland, were staunch anti-Communists who both favored a strong national defense and who actively aided labor movements like Solidarity in Poland behind the Iron Curtain.  In the West, that was practically unique--an anti-Communist, patriotic labor movement.   And that patriotism translated into support for Israel as America's democratic anti-Soviet ally.

That is very different from the European labor movement, which has been associated not just with agitating for better wages and working conditions but with leftist revolutionary social and economic change.  To this day, we can see demonstrations by European labor unions proudly waving red Communist flags and banners.  Nothing like that has been seen in America's labor movement for 50 years.  In America, it's commonplace for blue collar workers who belong to labor unions to be more patriotic than the elites in most universities.

As a result, the anti-Western attitudes in Europe don't just come from the top down--the intelligentsia.  They also come from the bottom up--the labor movement.  That didn't happen in America, where America's working class has been a strength of the American economic system rather than a revolutionary force looking to overturn it.

Steven D. Litvintchouk                  

 

I think the article misses one key point: Europe abandoned Israel for many reasons - most of them listed in this thoughtful piece, but RB's article left out the key fact: Europe abandoned Israel right after Munich - itself an attack on the heels of many other Arafat led jihado-terror attacks against Europe.

Europe's abandonment of Israel was a concerted act of cowardly appeasement in the face of concerted and well-planned acts of terror directed at them for that very reason: Arafat and the USSR knew the Europeans were manipulable cowards who would cave in. Remember: Arafat and his comrades were backed and trained by the USSR who continuously supported actively Arafat and his comrades. (Putin is playing a similar role with Iran and Syria.)

It is the cowardice of Europe - born in the ashes of WW1 when post modernism was born - which led them to appease Arafat rather than fight him.

Post modernism is the key to understanding the cowardly paralysis within the West.

Remember: all of Europe appeased Hitler; then the continental nations of Europe eventually and really rather quickly surrendered to Hitler.

Appeasement is the preferred policy of post modernists because they believe that there is nothing in the West - the Judeo-Christian West - worth defending, let alone worth dying for.

As post modernists, they are moral and cultural relativists who see all international conflict as conflict between functionally, structurally and morally equivalent cultures. The only reason the West has had an edge over other cultures for the last two millennium - according to post modernists - is that we were more ruthless and had better armies and navies.

The post modernists believe that the West got rich by stealing from the poor Third World. Post modernists assert that the West perpetrated most of the genocide throughout history - a flase claim, but one which animates their self-hared. And of course, the post modernists blame the "inhuman" industrialized West for polluting the entire Earth and causing global climate change which will - in their minds - destroy all life on Earth very VERY soon! The post modernists assert that anyone who disagrees with these conclusions is an unsophisticated rube.

All this is BS. The prosperity of the West is due our liberty and industrialization. If the Third World wants more prosperity, then they need more liberty and industry. Third World poverty can never be eradicated by transferring money to them. When USA tried to eliminate poverty by redistributing welfare payments to them IT WAS CALLED THE "GREAT SOCIETY", AND IT FAILED MISERABLY. It is stupid to repeat the mistakes of the past.