Offending conservatives: Europe, Islam, and the pro-Denmark bandwagon

You know what's funny? American conservatives generally hate Europe. Especially France, of course, but the loathing is generally quite continental. Europe may have given birth to Western Civilization, but now it's a socialist secular wasteland that's rapidly sinking into oblivion and irrelevance, that is, in essence, becoming extinct, dying. At best, conservatives want Europe to be more American, hence their enthusiastic support of Italian conservative Silvio Berlusconi and German conservative Angela Markel. Indeed, it wasn't so long ago that they enthusiastically supported a French conservative by the name of Jacques Chirac.

In being more American, Europe should be, according to a June 2005 Weekly Standard editorial, "a vigorous partner for American foreign policy objectives". An un-American, let alone anti-American, Europe is simply unacceptable (much like an un-American Canada). A Europe that promotes alternative goals, alternative conceptions of the good and the just, simply won't do. Which is why Europe is seen not just as different, but weak by design. Conservatives despise the European Union and find that their best European friend is Poland -- aside from Britain, of course, which conservatives like to believe isn't really European at all.

So how funny it is, in an odd sort of way, to see conservatives falling all over themselves in support of that great European power, Denmark, just because a Danish newspaper published a few provocatively offensive cartoons that belittled Islam (see here, here, and here). It's a case of free speech, conservatives argue, but the fact that speech is free, and ought to remain so, doesn't make it right. Are we witnessing a rush of conservative support to Holocaust-denier David Irving? Not so much. But conservatives are jumping gleefully aboard their self-made pro-Denmark bandwagon -- see here, here, and here.

Great, so a handful of them are courageously taking to the mean streets of New York and Washington in support of their new best friend. Are these rallies really "gatherings of individuals in support of individual freedom," as Andrew Sullivan has put it, or is there not something else, something far more pernicious, going on? Why else come to the defence of such ignorance and insensitivity?

I don't deny that these conservatives seem to love freedom, at least in theory, at least in speech, but they're obviously picking their fights selectively. When the other side is Islam, it must be so much easier for conservatives to reach out to Europe -- sick, weak, dying Europe.