Taking stock.

Elizabeth Bryant in a UPI item identifies a change in attitude of the garden-variety French citizen about the war in Iraq. Especially now that it's over in any substancial way, the outcome was good, and no-one will ask anything of them:

«Anonymous callers threatened him by phone. Strangers insulted him on the street. Friends and colleagues told Bruckner, a prominent French novelist and intellectual, that he had taken a gutsy but mistaken stance against the mighty antiwar tide in France. Two years later, 56-year-old Bruckner is hearing very different reactions." People are saying that even if Americans are making a lot of mistakes, they are changing things," said Bruckner, who supported ousting Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein but is sharply critical of the Bush administration and its handling of the conflict, "while Europe -- and especially France -- remains terribly conservative. We're the world champions of the status quo."»

Described as both a deep thinker and still a radical, his own words indicate quite boldly that the wet blanket of middle-mind types won't muzzle him. In Dissent Magazine he wrote:

«For the last half century, Europe has been haunted by the demons of repentance. Ruminating over its past crimes-slavery, imperialism, fascism, communism-it has seen its history as nothing but a long litany of murder and rapine culminating in two world wars. The typical European man or woman is a sensitive creature always prepared to feel pity for the sufferings of the world and to assume responsibility for them, always asking what the North can do for the South rather than what the South can do for itself. By the evening of September 11, a majority of our citizens, despite their obvious sympathy for the victims, were telling themselves that the Americans had it coming.»

«Make no mistake: the same argument would have been made if the terrorists had destroyed the Eiffel Tower or Notre Dame. Sensitive souls on both right and left would have urged us to flagellate ourselves: we've been attacked, so we're guilty. Our attackers are really poor people protesting against our insolent wealth and our western lifestyle. We Europeans spontaneously agree with our enemies in the way we judge ourselves, and we take shelter from the furies of the age by focusing on everyday economic and social problems.»

To think those who disagreed with him would actually threaten him. When facts challenge their precious little weltanschauung, they suddenly feel psychologically threatened and try to project that hatred on a free-spirit... Amazing.