European Values

When did Europe begin discriminating against immigrants?  For that matter, when did history begin?  This idealistic notion that Europe, or America (the ‘America’ that thinks it has ‘European Values’), is a non-discriminatory land-of-the free, red-white-and-blue, enlightened and tolerant society doesn’t hold valid under scrutiny.

Europeans have always come from somewhere else.  The French came to France from Armenia and Georgia.  The Saxons, themselves scattered and multi-ethnic after wars between the Ostrogoths and Visigoths, invaded Anglia at about the same time the Danes did.  And now they all call themselves English.  Spain wasn’t Spain at all until its disparate kingdoms were united by the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella.  Germany was never a united entity, and people moved from one European principality to the next without much thought of identity other than fealty to the lord who protected them.

The European Union hasn’t changed any of that.  People say they belong to larger entities now – a county, a state – but there is still a flow of people – some forced, some voluntary – from one area to the next.  So, historically we can agree with the European Union’s President,  Herman van Rompuy, when he said, “”Turkey is not a part of Europe and will never be part of Europe.”  But for tens of centuries, the people that comprise what is now Turkey have been flowing, voluntarily and involuntarily, into what is Europe.  So Europe – Bosnia, Serbia, Sweden and Switzerland – has Turkish immigrants.  Even more scary for them, they have Muslim residents.

Herman van Rompuy thinks that Europe is a land of Christians.  He forgets that in the flow of time, all Europeans once came from Turkey