Martin Wolf

So Europeans didn't want that.

And we look at... When I say we, I...

I look at these Americans now with the enthusiasm for ideology and for passionate belief, and also all I see is people who want to come and kill their neighbors because they have the wrong views, or they're the wrong color, or they're the wrong whatever.

And that's Europe.

That's European history, hecatombs.

Now, the problem with that

is if you carefully, toleration is your dominant mode.

You can accept everybody, except the intolerant, and you crowd them out.

That doesn't last.

As you rightly say, sooner or later, people start getting passionate beliefs again, and we may be moving in that direction.

But I'm one of those people who thinks once you're in that mode,

It's very difficult to find the off switch because sooner or later, everyone around you starts looking like an enemy.

And so I don't want to go that.

And most Europeans of my generation or even somewhat younger don't want to go that because we bear the scars.

And I think...

in a different way.

Why do the Chinese in the end accept the current regime?

Because it works and it doesn't kill them all and they don't want to lunatic again.

So we're not going to become go where you are because we tend to think where you're going could ultimately lead you to some very, very dark places.

Well, I think of this as the ultimate Faustian bargain.