Surrender syndrome

PORT STEWART, Northern Ireland-Everywhere one looks in Europe there are signs that free people are prepared to surrender without a fight to those who would place them in bondage.

In England, a new government-backed study has found that British schools are dropping the Holocaust from history lessons. Teachers are afraid to teach about the Nazi atrocity because Muslim students might take offense.

The study also discovered resistance by teachers to cover the 11th-century Crusades, when Christians fought Muslims for control of Jerusalem, because the lessons contradict what Muslim students are taught in mosques. The sacrifice of truth in favor of propaganda for fear of violence is the first step on the road to enslavement.

It gets worse. A new survey by the respected YouGov organization has found most Britons want to scale down their country's involvement in world affairs at a time of great international challenge. Fifty-five percent of respondents said they oppose Britain "punching above its weight," trying to have more influence in the world than its military and economic strength would seem able to support.

In Belgium, a newspaper has published a copy of the Quran in French and offered free coupons for a Flemish language translation of Islam's holy book. The paper also published a book called Islam Now, which presents a history of the religion up to the modern era. I haven't seen it, but would be willing to bet it contains little, if anything, about the terrorism carried out in the name of Islam by fanatics.

All of this-with surely more on the way-comes from the flawed Western point of view that others will be nice to us if we are nice to them. Were this true, the prisons would be empty and there would be no need for burglar alarms and firearms to protect us from criminals. Evil exists and must be defeated, or evil will triumph.

The world is on fire, but Britain and much of the rest of Europe are not paying attention. Its enemies are noticing. And while Europe's enemies arm themselves for war, they regard the European attitude toward them as unilateral surrender. Winston Churchill would have called it the gathering storm. As it has done before with severe consequences, modern Europe prefers to ignore the clouds.

-© 2007 Tribune Media Services, Inc.