Friday, March 06, 2009
In Defense of Hillary [Mark Steyn]
Mark (Hemingway), I take your point, and undoubtedly it's not what the Continentals want to hear, and it may not even be what Secretary Clinton meant, but America's sustained continuous democracy is older than Europe's:
Central and Eastern Europe were dictatorships 20 years ago;
Greece, Spain, and Portugal a little over 30 years ago;
Italy, France, and Germany a little over 60 years ago.
Look at the dates on their constitutions: If it's from the Fifties, in European terms that's "old."
Sustained constitutional evolution over the generations is a phenomenon mainly of the anglophone half of "the west": America, Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand. It remains to be seen whether that will continue.
03/06 02:47 PM
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