In the wake of Friday’s column I’ve gotten a lot of angry email from serious people who think I’m too glib about the Europeans and the French. Fair enough. Glibness, after all, isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. So let me very quickly offer my substantive critique of the Europeans, without jokes.

The Europeans claim that they lost millions of lives and experienced war first hand in WWI and WWII. That’s true and no one should discount the importance of these experiences in the collective European mind. But the question is not whether or not the Europeans learned a powerful lesson in the world wars — they obviously did — but whether they learned the right lesson. The European “lesson” seems to be that war is, as Chirac recently said, “always a failure.” That’s simply the wrong lesson. The right lesson is “never again.” Unfortunately you don’t hear many Europeans saying “never again” much these days or at least not about the right things. If the Europeans learned the right lessons, why did America have to stop the slaughter in Bosnia? If America is pro-oil and anti-Muslim why did we risk blood and treasure for Muslims on oil free ground? I’ll tell you why. Because America learned the right lessons while the Europeans held conferences on why America is the problem.

It is a classic free-rider problem. The Europeans take the global stability largely provided by America for granted. They assume their courts and conferences are the glue holding together a peaceful world order and downgrade their militaries to glorified police forces. So when America does what it deems necessary to preserve that order — even if it causes temporary instability — the Europeans think America is needlessly stirring up trouble. Indeed, even if in private they believe America is doing the right thing it’s difficult for them to publicly say so because it would highlight the fact that many European nations lack the means to help out in a meaningful way (See “The State of Nature”). When all you have is a hammer every problem looks like a nail. When all you have is a briefcase full of EU documents, everything looks like a problem for human rights and environmental lawyers.

I like Europe very much. It is the font of our culture and many of our greatest institutions. I have European friends and acquaintances I respect a great deal. Contrary to what endless angry correspondents think, I have lived, worked and travelled in Europe. But I have contempt for the reigning ethos of European elites when it comes to these issues and if I express that contempt with too much glibness for their tastes, so be it. That’s just how I do things.