I love this country, but the union jack leaves me cold.

That said, the question remains: how to strike the balance between free speech and mutual respect in this mixed-up world, both blessed and cursed with instant communication? We should not fight fire with fire, threats with threats.

The Eurozone has clearly gone spectacularly wrong, pulling down all the continental economies.

A central claim of the Bush administration's foreign policy is that the spread of democracy in the Middle East is the cure for terrorism.

Yet another thing Canadians and Europeans have in common is an obsession with the United States, and with distinguishing themselves from it, often by crude stereotyping.

Developments in information technology and globalised media mean that the most powerful military in the history of the world can lose a war, not on the battlefield of dust and blood, but on the battlefield of world opinion.

Starting from the ruins of the Second World War, we - all Europeans said, after centuries of fighting each other, we're going to build permanent arrangements in which peace between European countries is secured, freedom is secured, and growing prosperity. And that's what we have done over the last 70 years.