
My Dear Friend of Democracy,
Europe is, in a way, a strange place.
Many people are religious, although the Enlightenment has long since prevailed. Europe oppressed the world and gave birth to democracy. Such crazinesses.
According to the late historian John Hirst, the European civilisation was made up of three elements:
1) the culture of Ancient Greece and Rome,
2) Christianity, which is an odd offshoot of the religion of the Jews, Judaism,
3) the culture of the German warriors who invaded the Roman Empire.
Hirst wrote in "The Shortest History of Europe":
"It is our fate to be torn. Other civilisations have a single tradition and not this old threesome. We come from a very mixed parentage, and there is no place we can call home."
See you in Europe,
Johannes