Continuing Boyles.

It was Dennis who was labelled a menace after he decribed Europeans as cockroaches. Well, he had a point, in the metaphorical sense of them being practically intolerable and hard to expunge from the mind. Once again this can be illustrated- when you look at examples such as the recurrent anti-war demonstrations, presently (at this general time) taking place in European capitals and elsewhere to mark the injustice perpetrated by the US and allies in removing Saddam from his golden toilet seat, for instance. Anti-war even when there's no war to be anti.

Amir Taheri has a great article where he labels these people 'Pests in freedom's way'.

Taheri thinks that we should worry about what the symptom of anti-war derr-brain demos means for the health of the West, and Europe in particular.
'Why are so many Westerners, living in mature democracies, ready to march against the toppling of a despot in Iraq but unwilling to take to the streets in support of the democratic movement in the Middle East?', he asks.

The answer seems to be that their idotarianism is tolerated, condoned even, in a Europe without a heart for the stakes and without a serious brain for analysis- yet needing excuses for itself. Our politicians, unable to argue coherently for anything in particular, are forced merely to lie or pander to the mob desire to be morally or socially significant. This applied to the Blair argument that took as to war in Iraq, and applies as well to the Straw argument to take us deeper into Europe. Both quite deliberately emptied of true content and filled with less true, or downright false, content (although I knew what Tony meant about Iraq ;-} )

EURef exemplifies this with their fearsome 'we are more powerful' series of posts, inspired by the FO's man of Straw.

They also link to an excellent blog intended to cut through the obfuscation of European thought. The Transatlantic Intelligencer inspired this current post. Its latest post exposes the 'pests' or 'cockroaches' (yes, these are the kind of Europeans Boyles had in mind) for what they are: dumb irritants scratching at the very surface of our culture, yet drawing everyone's energies and attention, not to mention the panderous activities of the politicians. The really amazing thing is just how ignorant, just how contentless, these people are. One keeps imagining that to shout so loud somewhere in their morassed consciouness there must be a clear idea, some kind of reality beyond their reflexive (insect-like, swarming and making noise) anti-Americanism. But no. 'Argument weak- shout loud', as a friend of mine liked to say.

These are the kind of people which media organisations like the BBC- which claims to be an intelligent broadcaster- unquestioningly admires, or of which it asks admiring questions, or to which it offers admirable representation.