PrintResponses to "An open letter to Europe"
An open letter to Europe, by Herbert E. Meyer, which we published on November 11, has provoked an outpouring of response from Europeans. It has been widely featured on websites in Europe, and has been reprinted in a number of European newspapers. Thus, we have received a large volume of response from Europe.
With the extra time that the Thanksgiving holiday provides, we take the opportunity to publish a few of the responses.
Sir.
I am an Englishman who has a vast amount of friends who are US Citizens, including one friend I am just about to engage the last part of my working life with.
Your article regarding the above subject "IS CORRECT IN EVERY WAY." We in the UK suffer a Government who strangles anyone who wishes to become successful. The unfortunate irony of this Government in power is that the Leader BLAIR who is about as useful as a chocolate fireguard has had the balls to stand up with the US on the War against Terrorism.
Apart from that he is a total waste of time. We are dying as a race. I am a hard worker and have paid high taxes for the last 30 years and am so fed up with paying for every moron and his dog, 16 year old girlfriend with 3 children who cannot be bothered to get out of bed on a morning to do a days work, I am depressed by it all. The only thing that keeps me going are my American friends who mail me on a regular basis and speak with me to "Help me keep my stiff upper lip ever stiffer"...
I would give an arm and a leg to be an American. In October after 9/11 I took my family on Holiday to Florida on my birthday 10th October, 72 hours after America began bombing Afghanistan. That was my family decision to show our support for America. It was a simple decision we made because of our love for the States and no one man with a towel around his head is going to stop me and my family from holidaying in a country that welcomes us with open arms.
In the back window of my car I have a REMEMBER 9/11 sticker with this proudly bearing the stars and stripes.. Within minutes of 9/11 happening I telephoned 2 friends based in DC to check if they were OK with their families. My work is within law enforcement and we all strive for the same goal....
I am English and I love your Country and everything it stands for. Not everyone in this quagmire of a country hates anything American, far from it.
I enjoyed your article and I thank you for your Honesty. I became aware of your article sent to me by my American friends resident in the UK.
Sir.
GOD BLESS AMERICA....
Michael Pye
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In response to 'Open letter to Europe' by Herbert E. Meyer
I, as a partially Americanized European (by blood — my grandmother — and by culture — having lived 25 years in the States), smile at Mr. Meyers fears and phobias.
America has hardly ever been a Christian country.
Jesus' ideals have died a long time ago, smothered by the European — yes — European, insatiable appetite for riches, which appetite has done more harm to this world than any other human vice, and which can be exemplified and personified, among other venerable European institutions, by the Catholic Church.
After 25 years of life in the U.S. from East to West, North and South, among rich and poor from town to country, and village to city, I have come to the conclusion that de facto Judaism has, in whatever dress or disguise, since long replaced Christianity in that country.
Jesus today would cry in shame of those who claim his name.
The pursuit of one's own happiness, as stated in the U.S. Constitution (apart from that a very remarquable document), is NOT a Christian ideal but a free mason's businessman's dream. The Christian ideal is to pursue the happiness of others before the happiness of oneself. But that is a tall order indeed, and not one for a poor immigrant, religious or not religious.
But now that we, Europeans (including the Catholic Church which is the only institution of its kind to have apologised for its past), are trying hard, but not always successfully, to get rid of our nasty traits, (which, I suppose is what you see as 'dying'), and here you are, Americans, developing these nasty traits yourselves in turn to unprecedented heights and in a rather uninteresting and dull way, which is probably not so good for a society who claims to be the builders of a new way of life aiming at attracting the respect, if not the sympathy of the world.
By the way, how on earth can State and Church be separated and religion be at the centre? Does that mean that religion should have a favoured position? Isn't that a contradiction? And if it were to be possible which religion should be at the centre?
You fellows from the CIA might not be very good at gathering 'intelligence', but as 'visionary society builders', you sure are real wonder boys!
Also I haven't noticed more obedience to the Ten Commandments in America than in Mongolia or anywhere else, but, frankly speaking, less. As far as solving problems by killing people, between the U.S. and Al Quaeda, it is hard to know who is the best. They seem to be still competing.
Parents, as far as I have seen, in America have no time to raise their children, they are too busy. The notion of 'family' in the U.S. seems to be nothing else but a new 'trend', just like 'non—smoking' is today, after the U.S. hooked Europe on cigarettes and advertised 'smoking' all over our billboards for decades. How can anybody believe that you are in any way 'sincere', and not simply businessmen selling a new product called 'family'?
The rule of law has been set aside by the U.S. without a blink of an eye when it was convenient, by engaging in an illegal war against an other country! Same thing goes for Israel who doesn't seem to give a hoot about international law.
I am still waiting for the outpouring of art, music, etc. from the U.S.
So many drugs, booze, sex and rock'n'roll, so many doctors, lawyers, accountants, psychiatrists, hospitals, pharmacies, prisons and lunatic asylums, caused, maybe, by Americans not really being in America where they belong, does not make America a very attractive 'civilisation' for a civilised, cultured and educated person from Europe, or from any other old country for that matter, and not necessarily a 'civilisation' one would want to emulate, though Americans did indeed inherit that kind of 'civilisation' from us Europeans. But the XIXth century was not the 'flowering' of western civilisation, but the beginning of its decay. And that is what you have inherited: A decadent civilisation. Just compare portraits of Queen Victoria to those of Elisabeth the First, and you will understand what I mean. But the amazing thing is that who would have thought that such a decadent and wicked civilisation would continue growing to such heights of pompousness and madness in America? We Europeans, at least the educated ones, had hoped that you, Americans (once Europeans), arriving in a New World virginal of all corruption, would have gotten rid of European rot instead of developing it to such monstrous proportions, and learned from the local native population a far more reasonable and less harmful way of life.
Throwing two atomic bombs, one after the other, on two different cities of your enemies is NOT particularly Christian. The Christian Church shunned science for centuries by fear that these kinds of horrors might happen. The teachings of Christianity say it quite clearly: 'Do not do upon others what you do not want done to yourself!' This atomic episode is an appallingly shameful precedent that disqualifies the ones responsible from it ever attaining any kind of superiority other than...military. Which I think has been the case.
Traditional Christian civilisation has mostly accepted warfare as a necessary evil but at the condition it be limited to a combat between armed soldiers fighting for a just cause. Unfortunately the early European Chiefs, all Christians, set a very bad example by violating those wise principles by hiring soldiers, soldiers who began thus fighting for INTERSESTS, no longer causes. Traditional Christian warfare however, promoted fairness in combat, and, whenever possible, a vague equality of strength between combatants. All that part of Christian civilisation has completely disappeared since the nineteenth Century, leaving the door open to the worst barbarism the world had ever known.
Stealing other people's land and then killing nearly all the native population of that land, or putting them into camps, is NOT Christian AT ALL, but the result of selfish, greedy, corrupt immigrants, some operating piously with the complicity of Christian Institutions of which Jesus would have been totally ashamed of, and whose members would have probably crucified him a second time.
Money as supreme value is NOT Christian, but JUDAIC. Jesus acclaimed poverty! Read the Gospels!
Pornography as a major entertainment industry available to all, children and grown—ups alike, in nearly every home, is NOT a phenomenon born out of Christian civilisation, but one of the main and most insidious tools for its slow and sure destruction. Exploring the Internet, which I do often, it looks like half of the female population of the U.S. is engaged in pornography in one way or another. Meeting a young woman executive, flower girl or waitress, in the streets of any, big or small city in the U.S., one can't help but wonder if she might not be engaged, in her spare time, in the discreet enterprise of making extra bucks exhibiting her private parts, and finding no trouble whatsoever finding, in that field, an employment much more profitable than her legitimate one! Is that what you mean by purposeful, creative, imaginative free enterprise with minimum government interference and which is fuelling your economy?
The main thing Americans seem to have learned from the Bible is the 'Proverbs' or how to become rich. That is not Christian, but once more, Judaic.
George Bush, who is directly responsible for at least 50.000 deaths most of them innocent and defenceless women and children, is indeed a rather bizarre 'Christian'. He is also, lets not forget, the principal beneficiary of the World Trade Centre crime, and has used and abused its effect on the public in the most shameful way.
One single average American House wife consumes as much energy all by herself as 500 poor women in India. And, knowing both, she is, according to my personal evaluation, 500 times, so to speak, less happy. The American house wife is NOT, in any way, an example for the world to follow, unless one wants to find oneself in a few generations with not much left of the natural world — God's Original Gift — but billions of hair dryers, nail polishers, washers, TV's, vehicles and cloned beauty queens instead.
The main trait America has inherited from European Civilisation is, indeed, its worst: the continuous, unrelenting abuse of power by the strong against the weak, but that is NOT Christian civilisation, but going back to pre—Christian civilisation... Antiquity! A Hollywood dream for many rich Americans and Europeans, or maybe just for the more mediocre of them.
Europe, you say, cannot defend itself? I hope we never get to find out if this is true or not.
Europeans, indeed, are no longer conditioned by fear. They know what it means and where it leads to too well.
But, bare in mind, however, that if the Americans military seem to be hardly able to control a bunch of poor 'Indians' in Iraq who can barely carry a rifle, how are they to fare against highly sophisticated Europeans geared back to war?
My question is, what is America's 'vision' of the future? WHAT IS IT? Is it, on the outside, a dream world portrayed in ads on the TV screen, and, in the inside, in reality, a Gaza strip on a worldwide scale? Is that 'vision' one of a ruined planet, where what is left of it is transformed into a luxurious Luna park for a 'happy few' and a miserable, shantytown for the rest? That 'vision' of a 'better' world is obviously going to encounter problems with many reasonable people (if there are any left), who have never felt unhappy enough to want to flee their country to go somewhere else, never felt the need and greed to flee from poverty to dreams of riches, content, as they were to live in the country where they were born, even though for some, it was, indeed, extremely tough, but defended it throughout the centuries teeth and nails, sometimes, yes, and I am very grateful for it, with your help. But, remember this, Mr. Myers, those who have remained are progressing in a steady, tranquil and unspectacular way, and it is THEY, who are, at the end, the example to follow for the rest of the world, and indeed they are, not you Americans who never seem to be where you belong, and don't even know where that might be.
There is no great mystery to the cause of terrorism. There is only one cause: It is invading other people's land. Stop doing that (you and the Israelis, Iraqis, Russians and C
