Sunday Morning Danish

Europe has always fascinated me. It's a compilation of more than two dozen nations, each with their own language and culture, trying to fool themselves into believing that they are really only one community. Good luck with that.

Once you've covered cheese, beer and wine, it becomes a chore to find common attributes among European nations. Sure, there's the regular recrudescence of megalomania and the enduring fondness for getting something for nothing through force, sometimes called socialism and sometimes called theft. But the reality of Europe is that all the nations are brotherly bound by geography and, as such, they spend most of their time trying not to anger each other.

When the twin towers were toppled in New York, there was seething anger in far off Alaska. When the Spanish commuter system was bombed in Madrid, was there anger in far off Norway or Poland or Ireland? I'd say, likely little. Of course, there was an immense outpouring of support and compassion and heartfelt sorrow for those who died, but little anger. When Americans die, other Americans get angry. When Europeans die, who gets angry?

Naturally, when Spaniards die, other Spaniards get angry and when Brits die, all of the UK gets mad, but do Spaniards get pissed when Brits die? Probably not a lot. Europeans just don't feel European first. They feel Spanish or British or Swedish, etc., first, European second. Americans, on the other hand, are Americans first and Iowans or Floridians or Californians, etc., second. Europeans lack the identity trait of loyalty to Europe.

Nonetheless, the nations of the EU struggle to bind themselves together. And, recently there has been the emergence of a new identifiable attribute which Europeans can call common. Each country could now be assigned a statistically derived per capita rate of cars set aflame. The French probably can claim the lead in the Flaming Cars Per Person category since it's already being reported by the media on a per day basis. Last I checked, France enjoys having over 200 cars torched every single day, day in and day out.

Now, I believe that flaming cars is only a symptom of the much less quantifiable condition of public lawlessness. Furthermore, the degree of public lawlessness is an indicator of the stability of communities, regions and states. Consequently, flaming cars per capita should be a number that is calculated and reported regularly by all nations in the European Union. Get those statisticians working forthrightly.

With all that in mind, politically correct euphemistic "peaceful demonstrators" are burning cars in Denmark.

Granted, flaming cars per capita is an odd way to measure lawlessness, however, it's an inarguable way. A flaming car is a flaming car. Arbitrary "violence" figures must be interpreted. Not so with flaming cars.