Michael Ruse: Three Loud Cheers for the European Community
[Michael Ruse directs the program in history and philosophy of science at Florida State University. His forthcoming book is Science and Spirituality: Making Room for Faith in the Age of Science.]
I first went to Spain in 1961. I was a member of the University of Bristol’s "Vagabonds' Club." Forming ourselves into groups of eight, we would cross the Channel and rent a VW van in Ostend in Belgium. Then we would drive ourselves all over the continent for a month, camping as we went. The first year I went with a group across France, Germany, and Austria, and then down through the Balkans to Greece. Then the next year, driving quickly down through France, we went through Spain to Gibraltar, across to Morocco for 10 days, and then back up through Portugal, across to Madrid, and then up to the Pyrenees and back up home to England via Belgium....
...It was the life of the common people that staggered us. We had never seen poverty like it—remember we were not staying in tourist hotels so we saw much more of the real world than otherwise. Children without clothes, let alone shoes. Huge families with the listless look of the perpetually underfed. Horrendous diseases affecting the older people. Pathetic donkeys carrying huge burdens. Stench and dirt everywhere. There had been nothing like this the year before when we drove through the Balkans. People were poor, certainly, but not pathetic like this. Tito’s Communism clearly had many faults, not the least its inability to furnish a social and political foundation for the years when he was gone, but overall people were functioning and functioning in a way that made for a decent life. No one, except perhaps the upper echelons of the military and the church, could think that Franco’s Spain was anything but a terrible failure. And I should say that Salazar’s Portugal was not a great deal better. It wasn’t quite as awful, but it was pretty grim....
Obviously many things over the past 50 years have been responsible for the changes, not the least the deaths of the dictators and the turn to democratic government. But the European Community deserves a huge amount of credit. The rich countries, particularly Germany, have poured money and resources into countries like Spain and Portugal—as well as Ireland and Greece. Just at the moment, the EU is not getting a tremendously good press, what with the financial crisis in Greece and moaning in the westernmost countries about the influx of people from the easternmost countries. For myself, I rather like the huge number of jolly Poles who seem to run every pizza parlor in London—as well as those equally jolly Italians who set up the parlors in the first place and saved us from yet another death-inviting meal of sausages and mash.
For all its faults, the EU has been and is a wonderful thing. As we in America wrestle with our own immigration issues, let us never forget that what makes life challenging and worthwhile is the variety of different human beings and their cultures. Just think how dreadful it would be if everyone were English-born like me! My dad could never see it, but there really is more to life than warm beer and brown sauce on everything. Torresmos de porco (bacon rashers), morcela (blood pudding), linguiça com inhames (sausage with yams), caldo de peixa (fish soup), polvo guisado em vinho (octopus stewed in wine) anyone?...
Read entire article at Chronicle of Higher Education
I first went to Spain in 1961. I was a member of the University of Bristol’s "Vagabonds' Club." Forming ourselves into groups of eight, we would cross the Channel and rent a VW van in Ostend in Belgium. Then we would drive ourselves all over the continent for a month, camping as we went. The first year I went with a group across France, Germany, and Austria, and then down through the Balkans to Greece. Then the next year, driving quickly down through France, we went through Spain to Gibraltar, across to Morocco for 10 days, and then back up through Portugal, across to Madrid, and then up to the Pyrenees and back up home to England via Belgium....
...It was the life of the common people that staggered us. We had never seen poverty like it—remember we were not staying in tourist hotels so we saw much more of the real world than otherwise. Children without clothes, let alone shoes. Huge families with the listless look of the perpetually underfed. Horrendous diseases affecting the older people. Pathetic donkeys carrying huge burdens. Stench and dirt everywhere. There had been nothing like this the year before when we drove through the Balkans. People were poor, certainly, but not pathetic like this. Tito’s Communism clearly had many faults, not the least its inability to furnish a social and political foundation for the years when he was gone, but overall people were functioning and functioning in a way that made for a decent life. No one, except perhaps the upper echelons of the military and the church, could think that Franco’s Spain was anything but a terrible failure. And I should say that Salazar’s Portugal was not a great deal better. It wasn’t quite as awful, but it was pretty grim....
Obviously many things over the past 50 years have been responsible for the changes, not the least the deaths of the dictators and the turn to democratic government. But the European Community deserves a huge amount of credit. The rich countries, particularly Germany, have poured money and resources into countries like Spain and Portugal—as well as Ireland and Greece. Just at the moment, the EU is not getting a tremendously good press, what with the financial crisis in Greece and moaning in the westernmost countries about the influx of people from the easternmost countries. For myself, I rather like the huge number of jolly Poles who seem to run every pizza parlor in London—as well as those equally jolly Italians who set up the parlors in the first place and saved us from yet another death-inviting meal of sausages and mash.
For all its faults, the EU has been and is a wonderful thing. As we in America wrestle with our own immigration issues, let us never forget that what makes life challenging and worthwhile is the variety of different human beings and their cultures. Just think how dreadful it would be if everyone were English-born like me! My dad could never see it, but there really is more to life than warm beer and brown sauce on everything. Torresmos de porco (bacon rashers), morcela (blood pudding), linguiça com inhames (sausage with yams), caldo de peixa (fish soup), polvo guisado em vinho (octopus stewed in wine) anyone?...