Pig Herder

[H]ere is the rule regarding these strange folk [i.e., Europeans] who peddle weapons to communist China, whitewash Hizbollah, fund Hamas, and looted Iraq: the degree to which Europe is amoral by either its commission or negligence is directly proportional to the degree we see in its media and state spokesmen moral posturing and invective against the United States.

An American gets up, reads his paper, turns on her computer, watches his TV, and gets hit with "why did Dick Cheney wear a parka at Auschwitz? why was Bush in Texas during the Tsunami? why are Americans "stingy"?—all this in-between images and sound-bites of some third-world tyrant or half-witted UN functionary lecturing about morality, a Middle Eastern thug threatening us, and a subsidized European explaining to the world how awful the US really is.

A lot of zany but brilliant minds from Plato to Hegel to Spengler and other nihilists thought we couldn't pull off the wealth of capitalism married to the indulgence of democracy without becoming "men without chests". It is the duty of this generation of Americans to prove them wrong. And I still think we will.