Oh no, Mark Steyn comes to Hillary Clinton’s defense. He writes at National Review’s The corner-
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.
France was a dictatorship a little over 60 years ago? Only because Germany conquered them and the Vichy government took over from the democratically elected Third Republic. They collaborated with the Nazis. French citizens died trying to preserve the Third Republic from the Third Reich.
As for Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union imposed Communist rule. Do dictatorships forced on a country by other countries mean a country has less of a democratic history? People like Franco and the Nazis or Soviets are two totally different stories. Steyn is right that the US has a longer sustained democracy than most of Europe, but we haven’t faced a meaningful invasion of our territory in almost 200 years.(The War of 1812, Japan taking a couple of Aleutian Islands in WWII was a pin prick) On the other hand most of Europe’s citizens have had to deal with dictators from Napoleon to Hitler to Stalin deciding what type of governments they can have.
I really think Mark Steyn should re-think what he said.
