In fact, Americans are not the innocents we like to imagine ourselves -- not after black slavery or the murder of Native Americans. Human failure is, alas, universal. And despite the nightmare litany this century -- Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Franco -- Europeans, as a whole, are no more evil than people elsewhere in the world.

But, that is the point: Europeans are unworthy of our special admiration in the great world.

Maybe our current adventure in Yugoslavia will teach us, if nothing else, to regard Europe, once and for all, without embarrassment of ourselves or awe. Maybe, after our planes get shot down and our soldiers killed, we will come to judge the continent of Mozart and Shakespeare as no better or worse than Asia or Latin America or Africa.

Darkest Africa (Europe's myth). Exactly 100 years ago this spring, Joseph Conrad serialized his most famous novel, "Heart of Darkness." It is a novel about a European who takes a journey down the Congo, to encounter an unspeakable horror.

Today's heart of darkness lies at the far end of the Danube. And the savages have white skin. Today, the most interesting thing going on in Europe is not the EEC, but the new immigrants -- West Indians in London, Vietnamese in Berlin. And, while the churches of Europe may be drafty, dark tourist attractions (you must pay four pounds sterling to visit St. Paul's), the mosques of France are crowded and the most interesting writers in the British Isles speak Hindu cockney.

Europe, in other words, is shrinking. Slowly disappearing from the face of the earth. Spain, Italy, Germany -- all have negative birth rates, which means, in some future, they could disappear. That chic young couple in Madrid is more interested in taking a vacation this year than in having a child. And why not?

The continent that gave our American professors the sublime texts that we more innocently used to call "Western Civ," -- the continent that gave the world so much terror this century -- is not interested in having babies and wants a vacation in Florida instead.

The air fares to America, after all, are so cheap this spring.
salon.com | April 5, 1999

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

  Get a printer-friendly version

  E-mail a friend about this article

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Search Salon