I am eternally fascinated by the obsessive anti-Americanism of you Nordic folks. I see all the myriad faults of American society and policy and I am pleased not to be an American myself. But the world is not a warm, fluffy, comfortable place inhabited by rational, cooperative human beings, like Finland. It’s dirty, dangerous and chaotic. This is not a pessimistic view, it’s realism informed by history. There have always been empires, and into the foreseeable future there will continue to be. America is the world’s original popular democracy. It is therefore – despite its unpleasant, violent edge – about as unthreatening as an empire will ever be. It replaced other empires, generally much worse – German, Japanese, Russian, as well as British. It has only lasted fifty years and almost certainly won’t last another fifty. Be realistic, consider alternatives. Because unfortunately the world is not going to look like Finland any time soon.

(To Tuomas, a Finnish user of Wikipedia, following a dispute about the Vilnius Letter.)