The New York Times’ Roger Cohen Declares Himself a ‘European Patriot’ By Bruce Bawer
https://pjmedia.com/trending/the-new-york-times-roger-cohen-declares-himself-a-european-patriot/
In larger and larger numbers, Western Europeans are repudiating their subordination to Brussels. In Italy, this reaction has led to the installment of a government that is distinctly antagonistic to the European Union and, in particular, to its migrant-settlement directives. The United Kingdom, in accordance with the results of its 2016 plebiscite, is struggling to extricate itself from the EU. Elsewhere in Western Europe, politicians who reject the EU’s immigration tyranny are gaining support; in several nations of Eastern Europe, the heads of state, with strong public backing, are resisting EU demands that they take in armies of so-called migrants of the sort that are overrunning Western Europe. In May, elections for the European Parliament will take place across the continent. And at least some of the EU’s champions are unsettled.
I wrote the other day about one consequence of their concern: an open letter written by France’s most famous philosopher, Bernard-Henri Lévy, and signed by a glittering roster of celebrity “intellectuals” who fretted that anti-EU forces will win big at the ballot box in May. “Europe as an idea,” warned Lévy, “is falling apart before our eyes.” Highbrows like himself, he maintained, are fighting “a new battle for civilization” — a concept that, in his mind, is more or less synonymous with the European Union.
As if by design, Lévy’s open letter — which was signed by the likes of Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwen, and Milan Kundera, and was published prominently in several European newspapers — appeared on the very same day, January 25, as a piece by New York Times columnist Roger Cohen that made the same point. Entitled “Why I Am a European Patriot,” Cohen’s piece was more personal and passionate than usual. Here’s the key passage:
I am a European patriot because I have lived in Germany and seen how the idea of Europe provided salvation to postwar Germans; because I have lived in Italy and seen how the European Union anchored the country in the West when the communist temptation was strong; because I have lived in Belgium and seen what painstaking steps NATO and the European Union took to forge a Europe that is whole and free; because I have lived in France and seen how Europe gave the French a new avenue for expressing their universal message of human dignity; because I have lived in Britain and seen how Europe broadened the post-imperial British psyche and, more recently, to what impasse little-England insularity leads …
What to say about this? Well, it’s a perfect summary of elite opinion on the topic. But it’s sheer nonsense. CONTINUE AT SITE
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