Europe is Just Vacationing on Venus

The saying goes that America is from Mars and that Western Europe is from Venus. That is, America is more willing to use military power and Western Europe is reluctant to do so. European history since the Vietnam War era seems to bolster this view.

Victor Hanson writes:

In short, as a reaction to the self-destruction of Europe in World War II and the twin monsters of fascism and Communism, Europeans thought they could change human nature through the creation of an all-caring, all-wise European Union über-citizen. Instead of dealing with human sins, European wise men of the last half-century have simply declared them passé.

But human-driven history is now roaring back with a fury in Europe — from Mediterranean insolvency to the threat of radical Islam, to demographic decline, to new international dangers on the horizon.

I've never fully bought into the idea that Europe has had violence bred out of them. They have a long history that says otherwise, and our current era that provided the hot house to support the strange, delicate, plant of European passivity is ending.

We shall discover that Europe is not from Venus--Europe was just vacationing there for a while.