Two articles published on January 2, 2014 brought out the
following observations. The first article was written by Desmond Lachman under
the title: “An Unhappy New Year in Europe ?”
and the subtitle: “Confidence in a 2014 recovery appears to be misplaced.” The
second was written by Robert Zubrin under the title: “How we can help Ukraine ” and the subtitle: “The brave men and
women at the barricades in Kiev
are fighting for freedom and rule of law.”
What comes to mind when reading these articles and other
articles like them is the fact that America used to take the hand of nations
that succumbed to wounds inflicted on them by the self or by others – and walk
them, if not nurse them to health. But things have so drastically changed over
the decades that now, it is America
which needs someone to take it by the hand and walk it to a sense of realistic
humility.
Look at it this way: There is trouble at the heart of the
African Continent where refugees are created in some places, and they flee to
other places looking for safety, and for a way to sustain the family. But
nowhere in the host countries do you hear people say “we're so good everyone
wants to come here” as they do in America
even though economic refugees from south of the border do not find America as
appealing as before, and they are staying home. And nowhere in Asia are
refugees created in such numbers that they form waves of boat people who try to
sail to America
the way they used to do in the past.
The same can be said about the Middle East where trouble has
been raging for some time now, but no one in the region or in Europe – to where
the refugees flee – do you hear someone boast that they are so good the whole
world wants to get there and have a piece of their pie or share in their dream.
These people just do what is humanly possible to help the needy, and they try
to find a way to absorb them into their societies or find a way to return them
to their home countries.
So the question is this: How did America come to develop the
character that it has? Answer: What happened to America is not unique; it happens
to all the countries that take-in immigrants to develop economically and to
grow in influence. But while most immigrants only wish to get on with their
lives in the new country, some find it difficult to cut ties with the old
country. And these people come in one of two varieties.
You find that one variety develops sympathy for the place of
its birth, and wishes to help the people it left behind. These would be the
expatriates who send generous remittances back home. The other variety would be
the people who hate the regime they left behind, and use the power and
influence they have accumulated in the new country to go after that regime. One
example would the Cuban Americans who want America to destroy the Castro
regime. Another example would be the Jews who fled the world and want America to
destroy it so as to rebuild it and make it safe for them to live in.
The motivation and the intensity of the feelings do not pass
from generation to generation without modification. They change, of course, but
they also become so entrenched in the culture that you cannot easily separate
them from the other elements in the melting pot that is America . This
is why you cannot tell exactly what has motivated Lachman to write such a
pessimistic article about Europe based on the fact that the Continent has a
rate of unemployment matching the American “unofficial” rate; and there is the
perception that a country or two in the European Union may be approaching
bankruptcy when this is a frequent occurrence in America at the municipal
level, and threatening to come true at the state level as well.
The same goes for the Zubrin article which is so freakish in
any case, one would think the man is motivated more than anything else by the
drive to throw a trial balloon in the air to create material he can use to
write his next novel.