Dr. Frank's What's-it

Gove on Patten

Here's Michael Gove's superb opinion piece in the Times on European Commissioner Chris Patten, and European "sophistication" to our crude vulgarity.

Favorite amusing line: noting that Patten questions whether Iraq, Iran and North Korea are in fact "evil," he asks "but then what is truly evil in the exquisitely sophisticated mind of a Balliol graduate? Having doubts about the Kyoto treaty?"

I just love me a wry witticism from time to time. But the thrust of the piece is quite serious:

Even if the EU is not willing to deal robustly with the threat to democracy posed by rogue states and the terrorists they sponsor, what gives it the right to stop America “unilaterally” defending itself? The idea that the US should drop its guard now, and forgo its duty to protect citizens who have already suffered grievously from democracy’s enemies, is offensive nonsense. Especially when those steps will bring the EU citizens for whom Mr Patten presumes to speak a security he can never provide.

Mr Patten may protest that America as “Gulliver” can’t “go it alone” and the EU should not regard itself as “so Lilliputian that we can’t speak up and say it”. But I would rather Gulliver unbound, standing taller and seeing further, than Gulliver tethered by pygmies. Mr Patten may not recall, but it was Swift’s hero who, after they had freed him, saved the Lilliputians. Sometimes we need a giant’s “simplistic” strength. Now is such a time.

Maybe there's hope for these people after all.

Posted by Dr. Frank at February 13, 2002 02:28 PM | TrackBack