A New Day for American-European Relations?

There appears to be a little good news coming from across the pond that some of Europe's new or soon to be leaders are getting a does of reality.

One signal of new realism in Europe is a public call by the German news magazine Der Spiegel to tone down the over-the-top anti-American cat-calling that has obsessed the German press in recent years. That was followed by two major puff-pieces for Chancellor Merkel's effort to reconnect with America.

In France, Nicolas Sarkozy has started what he hopes to be his final sprint to the Presidency by criticizing the "1968 generation," which includes all the recent leaders of the EuroLeft. "1968" refers to the year of student rebellion that brought people like Schroeder and Joschka Fischer to power, just as in the United States the Sixties Left launched Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Both Merkel and Sarkozy are "welfare-state conservatives" rather than ideologically pure socialists. They can see clearly the suicidal limits of the multiculti Left, particularly its support for uncontrollable millions of anti-Western migrants, fresh dependent voters for the welfare state. They also see the looming fiscal limits of the social welfare state, as the Euro Boomer generation retires while a host of poorer nations are joining the European Union. Those nations cannot get the massive handouts that were routinely channeled to France. The money isn't there. The word "cynical" and "immoral" were used by Sarkozy recently to describe the Boomer Left. Europe's vacation from reality is reaching its natural limits, and public opinion is sobering up fast.

Most important, Europe can no longer deny the Islamist threat. The War on Terror isn't just George W. Bush's private phantasmagoria any more. Nicolas Sarkozy as French Minister of Interior has had to deal with two years of nightly riots by thousands of ethnic Muslim adolescents. The rioters are French citizens and cannot be expelled. They are not devout Muslims, but rather classically alienated young males who are easy prey for jihadist propaganda --- just as alienated young men were natural recruits for absolutist ideologies in previous generations.

I am not going to hold my breath on real change, real fast, but I would settle for a slow progression--just not too slow.