Memo To European Leftists: You Aren’t The Only Ones With Plans For Your Continent

By
Omri Ceren
– February 11, 2007Posted in: Academia, Europe

Prospect Magazine has published a mushy, hand-wringing piece of tripe about how Europe has lost its way. Now while we all agree that Europe has lost its way, Prospect has a unique way of approaching the problem: by totally avoiding any mention of the large, radical, and unassimilated populations of immigrants in the heart of Old Europe:

The EU urgently needs to give a new account of itself. Old-fashioned grand narrative and Euromyth will no longer do the trick. How about a true and self-critical story woven around six goals? … Europe no longer knows what story it wants to tell. A shared political narrative sustained the postwar project of (west) European integration for three generations, but it has fallen apart since the end of the cold war. Most Europeans now have little idea where we’re coming from; far less do we share a vision of where we want to go to. We don’t know why we have an EU or what it’s good for. So we urgently need a new narrative.

The whole thing is shot through with this lazy, pseudo-postmodern fascination with “narrativization” – with telling your own story and pretending that your powers of self-definition are glorious enough to shape the world. It’s a particular kind of conceit popular with academics and, frankly, with the international left.

But there are other people who also have stories – and very real plans – for Europe’s future. And we may not know much about much, but this much we do know: should native Europeans keep looking to their future without knowing what they want to do, others will decide for them.

References:
* Europe’s true stories [Prospect Mag]

Previously:
* British Muslim Leaders Issue Manifesto Calling For “Resistance”
* The Guardian, For One, Welcomes Our New Islamist Masters
* Juan Cole’s Latest Post On the Pope Is Just As Dumb and Ignorant As All His Other Ones (Not Getting the Argument Edition)

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