Not everyone can afford to be nuanced
Monday, 11 October 2004
David Warren
Canada continues to go about its business as if the present world crisis weren't happening. This is partly thanks to a ruling class and media for whom it truly is nothing more than an occasional excuse to call the U.S. president a "moron" or call his allies a "coalition of idiots." The events that came into clear public view on Sept. 11, 2001--which galvanized America as a new Pearl Harbor--played here like a hurricane story.
As we are constantly and publicly assured, we are different from Americans--apparently we don't bleed from the same injuries--and the breadth of the political difference could be measured in a recent Globe and Mail online poll. At a moment when the incumbent George W. Bush was surging 11 points ahead of John F. Kerry, down there in the States, website readers of "Canada's National Newspaper" preferred Ralph Nader by an insuperable margin (56 per cent to Mr. Kerry's 33), leaving Mr. Bush with his 11 points, but as a total vote.
Now, to be fair, the average Globe follower is as poorly informed about international affairs as it is possible for a newspaper reader to be. Yet we must remember that our ruling class consists largely of Globe readers.
The clich'--and it comes from the same class--is that Canadians are "more like Europeans." I think what they mean is that Canadians are more sophisticated, more broad-minded, more charming--in a word, more smug--than the troglodytes who live south of our border. We aren't the sort of people who leap to conclusions and, like the French, we respond to enemy invasion not with tasteless rhetoric and brutish weapons, but by talking about it.
This is not to say we are totally opposed to the odd foreign intervention. That would be simplistic, and we, as Canadians, with our European qualities, are never simplistic. But Iraq was done American-style--send in the marines to remove an "evil." Our style is more nuanced, more Rwanda--send a few lightly armed observers over to watch.
Now, we are looking at Europe through a one-way mirror: the kind that shows ourselves to others from one side, but from the other, only ourselves to ourselves. For the real Europe is, as I've been reminded lately by many European correspondents, nothing like Canada.
For the Europeans, the present world crisis is not something that can be ignored, because it is happening where they live. Unlike the Canadian multicultural milieu--immigrants from all over--Europe is filling with immigrants who are mostly Muslim, forming large, ethnically coherent, impoverished ghettoes within which Islamic radicalism finds its natural tinder.
Consider this: while our North American media were treating the Beslan "hostage-taking situation" chiefly as a Russian internal "separatist problem," and suppressing the more obscene details of the carnage, the European media were splashing the "Christian blood" across TV screens and newspaper pages, triggering an extraordinary, continent-wide wave of revulsion.
Now consider recent polls of public attitudes, showing that while Americans continue to hold (though by a slim margin) a "basically positive view of Islam and Muslims," in Europe the view is thumbs down, and it is not close.
There are public demands--even from mainstream politicians, and liberal clergy-that Muslim leaders publicly condemn Beslan and a thousand other jihadi atrocities in plain, unambiguous language. There is public discussion--on TV, no less--of things like "the need to recover our Christian heritage."
Part of the difference can be attributed to books. In the North American market, publishing on Islam is dominated by the happy-face twaddle of Karen Armstrong and friends. Whereas in Europe, two kinds of books are on public view: those by actual scholars of Islam, which stress the profound differences between Muslim and Christian worldviews and morality, and bestsellers by the likes of Oriana Fallaci, which argue for deporting the entire Muslim population.
Another difference is universities. We forget that "political correctness" goes much deeper in North America. This helps to explain why, in the American polls, the "better educated" have a more positive view of Islam. In Europe, it is the other way around: the better educated are more likely to harbour the view that Islam is "the enemy of our civilization." And they haven't formed the North American habit of saying it nicely.
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Monday, 11 October 2004
David Warren
Canada continues to go about its business as if the present world crisis weren't happening. This is partly thanks to a ruling class and media for whom it truly is nothing more than an occasional excuse to call the U.S. president a "moron" or call his allies a "coalition of idiots." The events that came into clear public view on Sept. 11, 2001--which galvanized America as a new Pearl Harbor--played here like a hurricane story.
As we are constantly and publicly assured, we are different from Americans--apparently we don't bleed from the same injuries--and the breadth of the political difference could be measured in a recent Globe and Mail online poll. At a moment when the incumbent George W. Bush was surging 11 points ahead of John F. Kerry, down there in the States, website readers of "Canada's National Newspaper" preferred Ralph Nader by an insuperable margin (56 per cent to Mr. Kerry's 33), leaving Mr. Bush with his 11 points, but as a total vote.
Now, to be fair, the average Globe follower is as poorly informed about international affairs as it is possible for a newspaper reader to be. Yet we must remember that our ruling class consists largely of Globe readers.
The clich'--and it comes from the same class--is that Canadians are "more like Europeans." I think what they mean is that Canadians are more sophisticated, more broad-minded, more charming--in a word, more smug--than the troglodytes who live south of our border. We aren't the sort of people who leap to conclusions and, like the French, we respond to enemy invasion not with tasteless rhetoric and brutish weapons, but by talking about it.
This is not to say we are totally opposed to the odd foreign intervention. That would be simplistic, and we, as Canadians, with our European qualities, are never simplistic. But Iraq was done American-style--send in the marines to remove an "evil." Our style is more nuanced, more Rwanda--send a few lightly armed observers over to watch.
Now, we are looking at Europe through a one-way mirror: the kind that shows ourselves to others from one side, but from the other, only ourselves to ourselves. For the real Europe is, as I've been reminded lately by many European correspondents, nothing like Canada.
For the Europeans, the present world crisis is not something that can be ignored, because it is happening where they live. Unlike the Canadian multicultural milieu--immigrants from all over--Europe is filling with immigrants who are mostly Muslim, forming large, ethnically coherent, impoverished ghettoes within which Islamic radicalism finds its natural tinder.
Consider this: while our North American media were treating the Beslan "hostage-taking situation" chiefly as a Russian internal "separatist problem," and suppressing the more obscene details of the carnage, the European media were splashing the "Christian blood" across TV screens and newspaper pages, triggering an extraordinary, continent-wide wave of revulsion.
Now consider recent polls of public attitudes, showing that while Americans continue to hold (though by a slim margin) a "basically positive view of Islam and Muslims," in Europe the view is thumbs down, and it is not close.
There are public demands--even from mainstream politicians, and liberal clergy-that Muslim leaders publicly condemn Beslan and a thousand other jihadi atrocities in plain, unambiguous language. There is public discussion--on TV, no less--of things like "the need to recover our Christian heritage."
Part of the difference can be attributed to books. In the North American market, publishing on Islam is dominated by the happy-face twaddle of Karen Armstrong and friends. Whereas in Europe, two kinds of books are on public view: those by actual scholars of Islam, which stress the profound differences between Muslim and Christian worldviews and morality, and bestsellers by the likes of Oriana Fallaci, which argue for deporting the entire Muslim population.
Another difference is universities. We forget that "political correctness" goes much deeper in North America. This helps to explain why, in the American polls, the "better educated" have a more positive view of Islam. In Europe, it is the other way around: the better educated are more likely to harbour the view that Islam is "the enemy of our civilization." And they haven't formed the North American habit of saying it nicely.
_________________
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