New at Reason

David Weigel | November 9, 2006

Cathy Young takes a whirlwind tour of Eastern Europe and comes away with observations on the fragility of civilization.

Comments

|11.9.06 @ 1:45PM|#

Not sure I see Cathy's point here.

I don't think open civilizations - like the present western civilization - are "fragile".

Open civilizations are able to adapt to circumstances. It is only when they close and lose that adaptability that they become fragile.

|11.9.06 @ 2:32PM|#

I am surprised Cathy failed to point out that afer WWII the Communists bulldozed most of what remained of old Dresden after the fire - supposedly they wanted the propaganda value of all of beautiful Dresden being destroyed by the Capitalists, and the fact that some of the city could have actually been salvaged was very inconvenient.

edna|11.9.06 @ 3:03PM|#

vienna: do not make the mistake i did and carry your bag along judenstrasse on your way to the hotels at fleischmarkt. i had a most interesting and uncomfortable encounter with some austrian cops armed with machine guns who did not like the sound of my german. a guy at the jewish cultural center poked his head out to see what the commotion was; when i yelled something at him in yiddish, he grinned and told the cops to leave me alone.

i suspect hollering "allah 'u akhbar!" would not have resulted in the same outcome.

|11.9.06 @ 4:00PM|#

Just spent 4 months in Prague bumming around...
It was surprising to see young people wearing shirts with KGB, USSR, or the hammer and sickle on them, like those symbols were campy-- like they were the Czech equivalent of a Saved by the Bell t-shirt. You don't see Germans these days wearing the hooked cross, but apparently the Soviets symbols haven't been stigmatized the way the Nazis' have. Fair or unfair? I don't know.

|11.9.06 @ 6:03PM|#

"normality and chaos"? How about "normalcy and chaos."

Everybody drink!

Lazlo|11.9.06 @ 7:16PM|#

emerson, the word you meant to use was not "stigmatized", but "banned". You don't see swastikas in Germany because displaying the swastika is illegal in Germany.