Europe's Biggest Problem Is Its Success.

America Should Do A Reverse Columbus. The World No Longer Needs To Discover America; But America Urgently Needs To Discover The World's View Of America.

It Is Not Just That It Is Profoundly Offensive To The Leaders And People Of A Democratic Germany To Paint Hitler On The Wall (or On The Remnants Of The Wall). It Is Also Consummately Counterproductive. Such Sauce Does Not Make The Meat Of Substantive Criticism More Interesting. It Means That The Whole Dish Is Pushed Away. It Does Not Mean That Britain's Voice Is Listened To More Attentively In The Councils Of Europe. It Means That It Is Listened To Even Less.

So What Were Europeans Telling Their Leaders? The General Message Was Perfectly Summed Up By The Cartoonist Chappatte, Who Drew A Group Of Protesters Holding Up A Placard Shouting "unhappy" - And One Of Their Number Shouting Through A Megaphone Into The Ballot Box. There Are 28 Member States And 28 Varieties Of Unhappy.

People Feel That European Institutions Are Remote And Bureaucratic, Run By Shady Cosmopolitan Elites. Britain Is Not Absolutely Exceptional Because If You Look At The Opinion Polls, Those Sentiments Are Now Quite Widespread Also In Continental Europe.

The First Job Of The Historian And Of The Journalist Is To Find Facts. Not The Only Job, Perhaps Not The Most Important, But The First. Facts Are The Cobblestones From Which We Build Roads Of Analysis, Mosaic Tiles That We Fit Together To Compose Pictures Of Past And Present. There Will Be Disagreement About Where The Road Leads And What Reality Or Truth Is Revealed By The Mosaic Picture. The Facts Themselves Must Be Checked Against All The Available Evidence. But Some Are Round And Hard--and The Most Powerful Leaders In The World Can Trip Over Them. So Can Writers, Dissidents And Saints.