That is why Jacques Chirac – the very embodiment of corrupt European political cynicism – and George Bush can never, ever find true common ground. When the President tries to give credit where it is due – to the European authorship of democratic revolution – it sounds faintly sarcastic.

I have written before on this page that European hatred of the United States has a great deal to do with jealousy of American self-belief. But there is an element of shame there, too. Because Europe knows that it has sold the pass. It has traded liberty for security: the safety of consensus, the reassuring unfreedom of bureaucratic control and an over-regulated economy.