The main problem with American power is not that it is American... No, the main problem with American power is the power itself. It would be dangerous even for an archangel to wield so much power.

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.

The whole project of European Union is one in deep trouble.

After saying yes to Turkey, the EU is having difficulty finding clear and consistent grounds for saying no to other, still more remote candidates - but being in the general vicinity of Europe does seem to be a continuing requirement.

If you had said to anyone in 1945, at the end of the Second World War with the continent it ruins, that you could have a European Union of 28 member states stretching from Portugal in the West to Estonia in the East, all of them more-or-less liberal democracies - they wouldn't have believed you.

One thing, however, I know with certainty: violence, or the direct threat of violence, of the kind we have seen in the past few days, is totally unjustified as a response to any published word or image.

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.