The Mask Slips

Instapundit links the latest in the series of "Gee, maybe Bush was right," escapes, this time from Der Speigel in Germany. Welcome as such developments are, we can't yet know whether Bush's Middle Eastern Gambit will play out. The place of Syria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, not to mention Palestine, vis-a-vis (the French has been creeping in of late, hasn't it?) the fledgling Iraqi republic has yet to be delineated. But there's a section of the article I think worth noting:

Europeans today -- just like the Europeans of 1987 -- cannot imagine that the world might change. Maybe we don't want the world to change, because change can, of course, be dangerous. But in a country of immigrants like the United States, one actually pushes for change. In Mainz today, the stagnant Europeans came face to face with the dynamic Americans. We Europeans always want to have the world from yesterday, whereas the Americans strive for the world of tomorrow.

How may it be possible that the regime of Cowboyus Maximus Bush Caeser Fascus is more progressive, for lack of a better term, than the multiparty, socially-oriented European People's states? I argued back in August, on the old blog, that the European states deserve the title of Bureaucracy, rather than Republic. I also thought the title might apply to the United States, if perhaps to a less severe degree. Maybe the strength of the popular will in the U.S., and it's relative youth as a nation, still gives it a progressive spirit that old, experienced Europe lacks. But if Der Spiegel is willing to give Americans credit for a greater desire to change the world, then perhaps the Liberal Revolution truly is on an upswing.