> As the history of the US since 9-11 shows, formal constitutional rights are
> no guarantee of anything.
Paris had a series of nasty subway bombings in the mid-1990s, but France didn't become a paranoid, violence police state and declare a 50-year war on the rest of the planet. The EU is structurally different from the US, on a whole range of interesting levels: Leftwing parties, strong unions, a far less mainstream press, etc.
> would probably look (A) blank (B) angry or (C) amused, if you
> told them that the EU is a beacon of human rights.
Western Europe has a toxic history of colonialism, but it also has fine traditions of resistance thereto. Human rights -- the right to organize unions, to express political opinions, to elect representatives, to live without fear of harassment and hate, to live without fear of the horrific structural violence of market forces -- are workers' rights.
> I lived in London in 1990-92 and I've heard Europeans talking about
> "Muslims", in exactly the same way that they would about "Pakistanis",
And have things changed since then, in terms of greater sympathy and understanding of immigration and immigrant cultures?
-- DRR