Ralph Peters compares "risk averse" Europe with a courageous, opportunistic America, and says it goes back to what kind of people got on the Mayflower. Here's an excerpt:
And so it comes to pass that, as America seeks to change the world for the better, Europeans are content to let dictators thrive and populations suffer - as long as Europe's slumber is not disturbed.Strategically, Europe is in danger of becoming the greatest impediment to positive change in the world. Europe clings to the international status quo, no matter how dreadful, simply because risk has been bred out of its culture. This leaves the United States (and Britain) with the choice of doing that which is necessary and just without Europe's support, or accepting the rules that made the 20th century history's bloodiest.
Europeans are correct when they insist that America has become a danger. We are, indeed, a tremendous threat to their self-satisfaction, to their dread of change, to their moral irresponsibility and to their dreary, state-supported cultures.
Our ancestors chose a new kind of human freedom. Europeans have resisted it ever since.