I was disappointed in Mark Steyn's book. The book failed to deliver on its promise. However, I did enjoy the wacky Vermont stories. My coworkers enjoyed them as well, but not for the same reasons.
Bawer confronts the Duckism Europhelia directly. In America we have a debate about tuition tax credits for private education. In Europe there is the phenomena of sending children back to their home countries to Koran schools. The schools are described in brutal detail.
The book also delves directly into honor killings and forced marriages. Steyn tended to dance into demographics. Bawer drives into the meat of the subject of forced marriages of second cousins. The immigration laws of Western Europe allow this debacle. It also permits people to collect welfare while they are abroad. One can get European welfare benefits while spending most of the year in the home country.
Bawer is a gay American who leaves America fed up with the religious right. Only one can find plenty of people including religious Christians who think Falwell is loopy.
He gets to Europe and he finds the homophobia of the Muslim Community much worse than his experiences in America. His partner is assaulted by a Muslim but beats the stuffing out of the Jihadi Superman. Maybe his partner should publicize the fact and this would require some sort of male honor killing. All Jihadi Supermen that get beaten up by Gay men could be killed by relatives. The author notes the propensity of gang style attacks so this wouldn't work unless.
Bawer notes the role of media is different in Europe. Media and politicians see themselves as a ruling elite. The notion of a Gomer Kerry who hasn't held a real job since leaving the Navy is the norm. Bawer also notes a media monoculture that is worse than in America. The sole exception is the UK where the Telegraph and the Guardian compette for readers.
Bawer also talks of Europaternalism, much like we do in this blog. Euros patting a Muslim on the head sending them off to a ghetto and expecting them to be obedient. When they aren't obedient it is societies fault. The book also touches on welfare abuse and fraud by Muslims.
The book is impressive thus far. Bawer confronts the condescending myth of the Eurosocialists with their elitist condescending arrogance. The reality is America does a better job of intergrating immigrants than Europe has ever done. Europe is more bigoted and less cosmopolitan than the USA.
I am in favor of the Bawer direct approach as opposed to Steyn's demographics and quips. The next chapter promises to be even more explosive as it is Called After 9-11
Blame it on America and the Jews.
Beamish in 08
Another sceene cut from the Harry Potter Movie.
Hermonie: Come on Beakerambo if you concentrate you can levitate.
Beakerambo Me Me meep Mi Ok Meep me
Hermonie: Alousterverde
Beakerambo: Me me me Meep Alaistair Cook mi mee
Hermoine: Oh my we better get you to the infirmary. You turned yourself into a sweet potato.
Beakerambo.MMMEEEE MEEEEP ME YAM mi meeeep
Hermonie: Okay so I don't know my produce. I will get help
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17 comments:
Is Alistair Cook related to Alistair Cookie?
I think beakerambo is having flashbacks...PTSD?
I have to check my Sesame Street for that parody. That sounds like a riot.
Beak, your obcession with Harry Potter is a little creepy!
I would hardly call two posts an obsession. Beakerambo has been in an acting slump. The roles for incoherent people seem to be reserved for Sean Penn.
We have a German correspondent who indicates similar problems in her country although not as severe as France. Bawer is stating what he saw in the Netherlands and Noway.
He also describes a light left fascism in Sweeden with open balots and harassment of opposition party voters.
My outlook on Steyn's book is much the same. I disliked his use of humor when applied to a very serious topic; his discussion on demographics and percentages of this and that made me feel as if I was back in college economics, which of course was right after lunch.
Ducky
People in Florida vote in privacy. They do not have left wing goons like yourself harassing them. This is Sweedish far left fascism.
Steve
The Bawer book is a far better book, but it is more personal. The notion of a big gay guy beating a Jihadi is funny.
Mr Ducky,
European tolerance is an eye candy. I see nationalism and not little racism on the rise, unfortunately. I know Germany: and I think the situation is the opposite. And not in the 50's, neither in France. Here and now. I am stating this sadly, as I love Europe, even if I am aware of what's going on.
Redwine
Many on the far left are Europhiles
and tend to gloss over problems in Europe while castigating the USA.
Back home in NYC, I could visit the ethic enclaves of almost every nationality and it isn't a big deal.
I worked many jobs with Guyanese, Dominicans, Haitians, Jewish and Italians all within desks of each other. The notion that Americans are less cosmopolitan or more xenophobic than Europeans is absurd. We may fewer languages or visit fewer countries. However a routine trip from Burlington VT to Washington DC is many times the trip of London to Paris in miles.
Redwine the situation with the Roma and Sinti just never seems to get better. Even in the USA they face some prejudice.
I don't want to get anyone's hopes up, but I hear that bert has been runnin' a few ideas past mr. beamish's presidential exploratory committee.
Ducky
Starting when with Charles Martel or after the Dreyfuss trial, blood libel, deportations ohh wait that was all about the Jews . Let us all thank France for the Baath Party and the idiocy of Pan Arabism.
Lets us thank the Fwench for drawing absurd countries designed to place as many people under Arab hegemony and even this is not enough for Arabs. Let us also thank them for selling out the Kurds and Assyrians.
Thank the Fwench for building O'Chirac for Saddam and arming him with mirages.
Vive le Duhkkky!!!
Just to contradict a little:
It is NOT the 'norm' in Germany to have only elitist lawyers in the Bundestag....to participate in an election, parties get money and the party determines who's running and who's not. You don't buy votes there...you give money to the party (some do) but not the person: people win on merit, not who raised the most money. They have plenty of plumbers, electricians, accountants, musicians, teachers; Angela Merkel was a scientist.
DUCKY...I lived in Paris for four years..got back Dec 2002...and I"m sure I'm not the only Beak reader who's looked extensively into the muslim problem in France.
The truth is the government has built town after town for these people and they put in a cop, a baker, a grocer, etc.....within a couple of years, the town's so run down and dangerous, the baker leaves, the grocer leaves, and the cops have to flee. Sorry your leftwing Pravda media here won't tell you the truth so you stay ignorant and OH, so sorry for immigrant thugs.
Those car burnings were nothing new last year. They burned about 100 cars a month while we were living there.
They're 'disenfranchised'?, the young won't take jobs where they have to work hard and which are offered to them. It's easier to live on the dole and light cars on fire. The theft level in the suburbs is awful now...they had none before the immigrants discovered they could get something for nothing.
The French are scared to death, but I guess you get a kick out of blaming them. All one muslim has to do is tell somebody they'll blow every Metro station up Monday morning at 8AM and they'd have to give in ...to anything.
redwine, I don't know how you know Germany, but my husband is German and we read Der Spiegel and Die Welt every morning ... The Germans have the guts to NOT let their muslims rule their roost; they go into mosques and deport imams preaching German hatred that afternoon. A lot of the kids are brainwashed like our kids are here, but most Germans won't put up with what we put up with.
I love Europe, too, and it's difficult to see what's happening in France, for sure..and I can barely stand hearing about what's happening in England, whoever thought that old saying might be wrong some day "there might NOT always be an England"..?
You see racism going up in Europe? How can it NOT? Everything ugly is caused by interlopers in their countries. You could eat off the sidewalks in Munich until the Turks came. And you could leave a bike untethered on the side of the road. Not today.
Sure, you could blame the Europeans. But it's ridiculous. I don't blame them one BIT for how they're feeling. ANd, when anybody tries to speak out, demand the immigrants either work or leave, or learn the language or leave, their leftwing gets nuts and blames the French and Germans who love their country. Thankfully, the language thing isn't an issue in Europe as much as it is here, because at least, in Europe, you don't see signs in English, Farsi, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, etc. Maybe 2 or 3, but that's IT.
Kills me the way beautiful European countries are being taken over and the ease with which the left is handing them the keys to the cities. why CAN'T good people who love their country demand those who don't love it leave, or at least take a job and stop living off them and burning their cars and stealing from them?
Ducky always knows better than the people who actually experience the problems!
(Just ask him)
Ducky, Z, part of my family lives in Germany, (mostly Hessen but I have many friends in Berlin, an amazing and sad place). Access to German TV and radio, and so on, let alone the newspapers. Also traveled a lot around there, so rather first hand sources. Germany, indeed, does not deal with the immigration problem like France does, (but neither are highly skilled immigrants with citizenship accepted socially) but let us not forget that France is a strong and strongly nationalizing state, and that makes a difference. Hence, while i think the US as more tolerant (has proved to be a better melting pot) - I see no point of comparison. The US is not a federation of nation states, Europe (and the former USSR to that ) - is not even a federation. We can't even deal with our historical minorities,
(France re Corsica, the heavily russified states gaining their freedom after 90, Basques, and so on...)let alone the rest.
Also, immigration changed: new immigrants stick more to their former identities, and that results in a strong ghettoization.
France is a very different issue, and not very easy to understand from the outside (often, not even from the inside): on the one hand it wasn't a "Muslim' problem, on the other all those people are considered French by law (most of them from the former colonies, that is also changing). Also, ghettos. Also: the car burning has been going on for a very long time, so what we saw last year was just a peak, not even a major one.
Europe has her great traditions, but tolerance definitely wasn't one of them. Our whole history proves it.
As for racism, look at the Roma, and the Jews: that has been always part of a highly accepted racist discourse. Often official, and when not, still going on.
Redwine
The stigma towards the Roma just seems to keep going.
The European Union can't even get together on Iran kidnapping EU citizens - the British sailors and Marines.
Imagine if Americans were kidnapped by Iran and everyone said "That's okay, they're from Massachussetts."
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