To the editor: Contributing author Josh Hammer is as soon as once more participating in conservatives’ favourite pastime: waxing nostalgic for a time that by no means existed (“Louvre heist is only one approach Europe is surrendering its tradition,” Oct. 24). He thinks European society is being destroyed by outsiders altering the tradition? The irony is that those self same sentiments might have been expressed at any time within the final 2,500 years.
European historical past is the story of outsiders coming in and altering the tradition. The Celts, Macedonians, Romans, Huns, Ostrogoths, Moors, Vikings, Normans, Ottomans, Rus, and so forth., all conquered lands and left everlasting alterations. The European tradition he admires wouldn’t exist with no fixed inflow of latest blood.
What’s most shocking is that any Jewish individual would ever be pining for Europe’s good ol’ days. When would which were? Mid-century Germany? The France of the Dreyfus affair? The shtetls and ghettoes of Jap Europe? The pogroms? The Spanish Inquisition?
Each Europe and America must develop and alter with the occasions. Accepting new concepts and folks is a part of that. To do in any other case is to show into some weird theme-park model of nationwide identification.
Arnold Burke, Lake Forest
..
To the editor: Hammer equates the decline of European private happiness ranges with a gravitational draw back from church and kids. How he would understand how many individuals are sad in a continent with a inhabitants of greater than 700 million is kind of a trick.
As to his broad-brush assertion that European abandonment of church and faith are answerable for society’s ills, he fails to say the Catholic Church’s decades-long historical past of overlaying up baby intercourse abuse allegations. Vatican-sponsored dioceses right here, there and all over the place have been discovered opting to guard predatory prelates as an alternative of harmless church-going victims. Comparable crimes and cover-ups have additionally been alleged in evangelical congregations. When folks lose belief of their non secular leaders and establishments, is it so shocking that they may take into account doing one thing else on Sundays?
As for Europeans surrendering their respective, distinctive cultures, he attributes that to political and financial integration and what he calls “imposed mass immigration.” He fails to acknowledge Brexit, the rise of far-right extremist political events, elevated xenophobia and huge wealth disparities as contributing components. He conveniently overlooks what U.S. Common Philip M. Breedlove, the previous supreme allied commander in Europe, mentioned in entrance of the Home Armed Companies Committee in 2016: “Collectively, Russia and the Assad regime are intentionally weaponizing migration in an try and overwhelm European buildings and break European resolve.”
Maybe Hammer would concede that war-mongering dictators killing youngsters and households has one thing to do with unhappiness and lack of religion.
James Kearns, Santa Monica
