Great Letter

From National Review Online's "The Corner" :

An American living in Europe writes to NRO : "The one thing that really strikes me about the murder of Pim Fortuyn is the pictures they have been showing on all the news channels. The one where he is having food thrown at him at a press conference. Whatever happened to those folks? Were they arrested? Was anything done to them? How can the Dutch Left be so shocked by the violent death of a politician when they ignored (or cheered) the first steps of leaving debate and argument behind? ... You cannot imagine what it is like here. Le Pen inspires marches, not debate (Chirac wouldn't allow that to happen). Berlusconi's labour advisor is himself gunned down. Has the left become so bankrupt that they cannot even enter the arena of ideas? After all, Le Pen isn't that hard to argue with, is he? The sad thing is, what is the life of politics in Europe is the life of academia in the United States. How long before our politics degrades to this level?"