Arrival and Departure

For years I've heard the racist canard that "the whole US political spectrum is more right-wing than other democracies"--racist because it pretends non-white democracies like India, Korea and Japan don't exist. It also ignores actual European politics--like Thatcher or Sarkozy--in favor of an idealized Scandanavian model. My loyal reader will understand the gratification with which I read this commentary on the recent pan-European elections:

Across the width and breadth of Europe, the more conservative political parties were drubbing the parties of the Left. It means in a few months, every major nation in Europe will have a political party of the Right in power.

UPDATE: I found this quote on Dailykos.com:

[The British National Party] won 6.6% of the national popular vote. That means that 13 out of every 200 voting Britons voted for a party that supports repatriating immigrants and denying the Holocaust and suppressing the franchise from minorities, as well as all manner of horrifying social policies. And that means that two members of a party whose founder declared "Mein Kampf is my bible" will be joining an organized group of far-right kooks from the rest of Europe. They'll get European taxpayer dollars to do "research" on policies and to support their campaigns. They'll gain an aura of legitimacy as they walk around styled as MEPs for the next five years. At best, they'll be a running embarassment. At worst, a foreshadowing of the neo-fascism that's become prevalent in so many other European countries.

Not that the Europhile-left will ever admit that any of these people might be farther to the right than BushChimpHitler, but it's good to know that reality is not on their side.