To be honest, and I am absolutely not a liberal- I don't really disagree with the essay. Notwithstanding the problems in Europe, exclusively created by leftist idiocy, Europe is still a great choice for a vacation, with an incredibly disproportionately amount of classy, attractive, polite people in every single country there. The obvious tourist attractions are also great, but I digress. Anyway, I would absolutely bet on a given person in Berlin or London or Paris (assuming a native) being more likely to be a more pleasant person than a randomly selected person from Philadelphia or Boston or New York. It's not even close. This essay may have been written by a liberal, but I can just as easily picture it from a old school Right source like Chronicles Magazine.