The New Threat to America: Europe

Fabio P.Barbieri

Thank you. Sometimes I wonder what it will take to get some of my American friends to realize how ridiculous and counter-productive they are.

Fergus Pickering

I' new to this. How wouldyou KNOW that America was getting Europeanized. Would people start speaking French and eating snails? Would baseball be replaced with cricket? Or French cricket? Does Mark Steyn give any examples of Europeanized Americans? Presumably he does but who are they? The last Europeanized American President was surely Thomas Jefferson?

Alf Tupper

It's worse than Steyn states, in that 'Europeanism' is a threat to Europeans

As for, "a greater percentage of the population(of Europe) than at any point in history has the opportunity to make their own choices about how to lead their lives."

The most important choice for me is whether or not I want my country to be run from this country by my fellow nationals, or from Brussels by foreigners I never voted for, and have little in common with. That choice is denied.

Not sure what a 'twofer' is, but if what you mean is that the '2050' scenario is ridiculous, then you're way into denial and every bit as susceptible to the blinkers of 'You Know You Are Right' as those you ridicule.

Wilhelm

More erroneous twiterings from Alex , what the hell is a twoffer ?
Er um Alex , there are 6 million muslims in France, 2 million in England , half of Rotterdam is now muslim, so is Leicester. Plus Europe has given us nazism, communism, atheism , secularism.
Alex, why dont you admit it that you are just a snob and a Ameica hater ?

porkbelly

Fergus - you'll know Americans are being Europeanized when they meekly accept being spied on by government CCTV cameras, when they fly into hysterical fits at the thought of temperatures rising two degrees centuries from now but aren't bothered by Islamist terrorists next door, when they see Jewish conspiracies and cabals everywhere, when they cower before any external threat (Russian, Iranian, fill in the blank), when they abjectly accept ever-rising taxes on driving, walking, drinking, breathing, etc., when they stop listening to Lynyrd Skynyrd and start listening to techno, when men carry purses and wear grape-smugglers at the beach...you get the picture.

Olaf Rye

I think that the point made by Mark Steyn has been completely missed. The 'Europeanisation' of the United States that he bemoans refers to precipitous expansion of the state and the abnegation of liberty. We are currently regulated in the most ridiculous fashion, and have exchanged our liberty for the job security and a social safety net. We lazily walked into this position, because of the lovely siren song of the left which promises to protect us from the storms of the free market. It is a terribly paternalistic attitude to government and one which I think that many of our friends and colleagues in the USA, Australia and elsewhere do not share. I must confess that I feel the oppression of having some faceless bureaucrat meddling with every aspect of my life through planning laws, health and safety boards, taxation, etc.

Valerie

Gee Alex, ever heard how lefty Euro's talk about America? It seems "diversity" only applies to left-of-center views. We prefer to make our own way in the world without being lectured on our "barbarity" and "religosity" by a continent that gave us Hitler, Stalin, Franco, Marx and Mussolini in less than 100 years.

dearieme

"How wouldyou KNOW that America was getting Europeanized." The women would become chic.

OldSouth

If I may butt in from across the pond...?

So many of us are escapees from Europe, or descended from escapees, or the children/grandchildren of people whose only European tour took place in troop ships, and on foot after landing.

Suspicion of Europe is a bit in the DNA, to be certain, but if you'll pause a moment to think, there is some reason behind it.

Personally, I'm not hostile toward my European cousins, but am deeply grateful I wake up here every morning. The US is an unusual place--unusually free, unusually safe, unusually prosperous, and most unusually politically stable.

Richard, Dublin.

Whatever about Steyn's arguments (I happen to agree with them wholeheartedly) he's funny...... Which is more than you, Mr Twofer......

Elke

Unlike the Spanish, Americans did not bowed to terrorism and voted for Socialists, which I think was very much what the Muslim radicals wanted. Why did Islamic terrorism determined the Spanish election that way? Why do they prefer a socialist rather than a liberal government? The answer may be AFFINITY, ideologically speaking. Europe is full of socialism, isn't it?

Wilhelm

From Wikipedia .
A twofer is a cabling device used in theatrical stage lighting. It allows two stage lighting instruments to be connected to one dimmer. It is wired in parallel, such that voltage is consistent throughout the circuit, and current is shared between the two instruments. Twofers can be used in conjunction with cables with the same types of connectors. [1] The name is a corruption of the phrase "Two For One".
[edit]

Haliburton

No, Alex, Europe is not a “remarkable success story”. In particular, Western Europe is full of so-called social democracies (read socialist states). These countries have had high unemployment and declining economies for many years. They got this way because the U.S. overindulged them after the war by providing recovery funds and defense. Like children, Europeans used their “economic vacation” period, as funded by America, to develop social policies which are unaffordable when not subsidized by the U.S. Simply stated, Europe is now essentially without a responsible adult population. The population relies on their pathetic socialist governments to provide them with the necessities of life.

kivi

Europeanization as Steyn uses it means voluntarily giving over authority over one's life decisions big and small to what one imagines is a benign wise government providing cradle to grave security. It is accepting confiscatory taxes to support permanent Welfare idlers and the ever enlarging bureaucracy of small minds who know better than you, the inept citizen how your money should be spent.

Even with the Left's tireless promotion of Obama in the media while covering up his blatant socialist bent, Americans are at least split down the middle, unlike Europeans who have voluntarily donned the yoke of slavery and like Mr. Massie feel smugly superior while doing so.

Your EU government masters have decided it's a good idea to flood all your countries with colonists from an incompatible culture/religion/ideology who have no intention of assimilating and are busily remaking your customs and laws in their image when they are yet a minority. Let us know how that works for you when large swathes of your country are turned into the already existing "no go" areas they dominate and even your police are afraid to enter.

joseph city

America's great advantage over much of the world (and, certainly, Europe) is its adherence to individual liberty and responsibility for success and failure. As President Obama introduces more policies that detract from that, the US will become more like Europe -- and that would be a damn shame, indeed.

Leigh

The comments here are better than the article which is notably devoid of any facts, wit, insight, originality, or any other redeeming content. With their on-the-mark responses Porkbelly, Alf, Wilhelm and others managed to make me feel like I hadn't completely wasted my time by reading this thing.

Archie

I'd rather read Mark Steyn than Alex Massie any day. At least the man has wit!

Colonel Neville

Dear Alex the Clockwork Orange: Excellent Left luvvie consistency. Glib, fatuous, stale, tenth hand cliched ad hominems as per usual, all thrown at Mark Steyn without focusing on a single point where gee, he's er, wrong. And golly, sans any counter evidence! Bravo.

And your massively read site, book and sought after opinions are where again? Five stars for logical fallacy & cognitive dissonance. Again, outstanding mediocrity.

Colonel Robert Neville blogspot com

Mike B.

Olaf Rye has it exactly right.

Mr. Steyn's critics on the Left routinely miss the point, being so mired in political correctness as to have lost the mental agility required to read for comprehension. I love Steyn's practice of showing these people up by simply linking to them and letting them expose their utter cluelessness in their own words. It must be mortifying to have your readership increased ten or a hundredfold or more while being humiliated by someone you despise.

agnostic

Wow! So the people of Denmark, Iceland, Ireland, Switzerland, Austria, Malta, Luxembourg, Sweden, are happier than Americans? OK, let's see one by one:
First, the Swiss. They're something quite different from the rest of Europe, with freedoms and self-determination rights unparalleled in the neighbourhood. A country that might come close, Iceland, happens to be another one that made the list.
Ireland is currently - or has been until recently - enjoying its economic miracle period, so another country a bit out of the ordinary.
Malta, Luxembourg - countries the size and population of about a midsize city, one of them a Mediterranean tourist destination to boot. Local oddity.
Austria, Denmark - smallish countries both area- and population-wise, demographically quite homogeneous (except for recent immigration), without much opportunity for internal frictions.
Sweden - another country a) with population under 10 mil., and b) quite distinct culturally, notorious for its tradition of exceptionally strong ethics and perseverance (virtues likely somewhat eroded by now, but still not dead).
When France, Germany, Italy, Spain or UK make your list, than let's talk.

William Lambton

The French did not support the Iraq invasion
because they were not paid.

Ronnie

Well Alex, if nothing else (and I can see nothing else in this) you sure stirred them up.

Kralizec

The recency and superficiality of Mr Massie's acquaintance with Mark Steyn's thinking is obvious to those of us who have been reading his articles, blog posts, and book for some years. Mr Massie's flippant or, at any rate, quick and easy interpretation and dismissal of Mark Steyn would be the appropriate response to many writers. One has too little time, and it seems one is rightly unwilling to waste much of it on writers whom one considers intellectually lightweight. However, it is worthwhile to truly acquaint oneself with Mark Steyn's writings before attempting to comment on them.

elixelx

Alex, now that you've got more than your usual two commenters, you must have realised that shilling to the liberal wacko community by attacking conservative writers is the path to popularity!
By all means become a full-time whore instead of the part-time slag you have heretofore been!

CatoThe Eldest

Europeans are so cultually enervated you won't even breed! You're not enjoying life enough to pass it on! Your economies are stagnant and Brussels is a bigger cesspool than Washington DC and you're in demographic decline! Why would anyone want to emulate that?

Chris

Alex Massie is an anagram of 'sex malaise.' I rest my case.

David

Condolences, Alex. I'm sure you didn't think that a reasonable criticism of a rather odd writer would result in this abuse.

Nicholas Hallam

Mark Steyn, for all his faults, would not set up a straw man and then lose to him, as Mr Massie manages here.

Wily Trout

I thought 'twofers' meant two for one. As in happy hour. Still doesn't make the article any more sense though. I wonder what Mr Massie makes of the resounding responses. Probably sitting there thinking "rednecks"...

Ted S.

Ah, thank you Mr. Massie. The purpose of the nation is to "report higher levels of happiness". I always wondered what the nation was for. Now I know. That also explains why those clever Europeans allow in so much narcotics. After all, it's all about happiness, right?

Only one thing bothers me. If Mr. Massie (at least I think it's "Mr.", the photo is a bit ambiguous) is one of the self-confessed happy, why trouble himself to lash out at the poor, benighted Americans? Doesn't that kill the happy buzz? Or does he just "enjoy the rage" and find it "much more satisfying to complain"? Or maybe he's just feeling a wee bit insecure about something or other ... though not the future of his country assuredly?

Oh, one more thing. If Sinn Féin is so bad, why does your wise European government cozy up to it so much? Or is Sinn Féin-ism only bad if it is in America, but good if it is in Ireland? Gosh, that would seem kind of ... bigoted.

Ted S.

David, How do you know that it is not Alex who posts "abuse" while the commenters are "reasonable"? Is it just because you want to believe Alex? Or is it because criticism of "rather odd" writers is automatically reasonable? Either way, it looks more like prejudice than analysis.

Twofirty

I am finidng that the disconnection between the ideal world of the vocal right and the real world that they should be engaging in is getting so vast that it is pushing me leftwards. I speak as someone who was a big Bush supporter in 2004. I used to really like Mark Steyn but he has exaaggerated the statistics of Muslim presence in Europe so much that it undermines his arguments. I'm not keen on Islam either but it is just not true to say that half of Leicester is Muslim. Half may be Asian but there are a lot of Sikhs and Hindus in there. Furtermore, there are large towns in England with no sizeable Muslim popultion at all. Liverpool, Hull, Portsmouth, Plymouth, newcastle, Exeter, carlisle...

George C

The point Steyn is making is that America traditionally stands for government by the people for the people (i.e. small government that has to be answerable to the grass roots) whereas Europe stands for government by the bureaucrats for the bureaucrats (i.e big government run by elites who consider themselves to be above the grass roots). In Steyns view, the European model may lead to short term happiness but long term misery because it is unsustainable. Steyn is worried that the European model of government is now being pushed on America by a Democratic congress and, for America, a very left wing president. If you don't get the simple point he is making, you obviously did not bother to read his article. Or perhaps you believe you are too sophisticated to read his article - a very European attitude.

ben

You know, the more time you spend wallowing in the slime of witless burbling insanity with Steyn the self-loathing Canuck and the gurning idiots over at the National Review, you only encourage them. These are not people who partake in any sort of political discourse; they are tiny-minded idealogues without the wit to be talk-radio hosts.

Wakefield Tolbert

Wow.

Thanks yet again to yet another author who misses Steyn's point--and the whole point of nationhood. By Europeanization of course (to those of us who've actually read Steyn) that by this term he means the rapid expansion of State power over...well..just about everything in our lives, including eating habits.

Like Europe does, for the most part. The expansion of the Nanny State, which eventually turns not into democracy, which was the goal of socialization and "egalite", but rather a docile and cowed populace the overlords treat as their wards and thus their....children.

The infantilization of people is the chief end of Europeanization. Declining birthrates. The onslaught of massive immigration policies far more damaging to the the commonweal and the common culture than separation from American interests. Then we have the sumptious handouts and benefits paid by hock into the future against the demographic dangers inherent in this when the populations halve every generation or so. Also not good. Then we have the Multicultural mush--a sardonic happy face on a stick that means nothing but slush and gush and is the main reason many young men and women turn from fish and chips and bagettes and sipping wine on the beach to something far more culturally attractive: Islam.

The question is why this discussion is even relevent much longer. Europe is all but finished.

Americans realize there is more to life than sucking wine on the beach, playtime and 12 weeks government paid vacation, and pondering Sharia Law and cowing in fear of car bombs and riots every time some government nanny warns of the need to regulate speech.

It goes on and on and on.

Cossetted poverty. Rules on steakbones fed to dogs. English kids learning Punjabi to assuage the feelings of kindergarten kids--some of whom are all related as first cousins these days.

Wow. What a bargain.

The left both at home and international responds that the cure is yet more unelected busybodies in the UN to make sure we don't upset the Islamists, and the Steyn stats on Muslim birthrates are wrong. So thus Europe will be transformed in 60 years rather than, say, 25.

I feel better already. May the State comfort me with lotions and pills while taking guns so that I can't stanch breakins, and others in Europe make gory snuff films for internet ghouls all the while telling us that "they" don't really mean it when they say the infidels must go.....

Olaf Rye

I really do not understand the criticism that Ben has of Steyn and those at the National Review--it is particular odd that the charge of 'self-loathing Canuck' is directed towards him. Does your nationality necessarily require you to espouse a left-of-centre ideological position and be a champion of paternalistic government ? Many Canadians that I know are exasperated by exactly the same things and have no difficult in reconciling their disillusionment with a government and public that desires government to solve all their problems and protect them with their national identity. Indeed, many of my friends and colleagues throughout Britain and Europe also feel overwhelmed by the meddling of the state in nearly every aspect of life. This is a point not of nationality, but rather of whether we want our liberty to fail as well as succeed.

The model of state intervention and regulation championed by Europe has stifled many people and there is indeed a draw of some of our best and most dynamic people to nations with less regulation. Many in the Obama administration believe in government and see it as the friend of the public, and thus have no compunction about expanding it to unprecedented levels. I think that Steyn is issuing a prescient warning, for he has seen the same process unfold in Canada and many of us have seen what this has accomplished here in Europe. It may be wise to recall the words of C.S. Lewis:

"It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent
moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his
cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their consciences."---C. S. Lewis

ndm

Great post from Alex Massie. The twofer assertion about Mark Steyn was particularly funny - being true.

I have never understood the ultra-right's fascination with an "all must have prizes mentality" where any two-bit bigot whining about the Islamization of Europe or the Europeanization of America is given a column and regarded as a Messiah by a bunch of half-witted morons.

Conservative Cabbie

Ben

"idiots over at the National Review"

Yup, Oxbridge and Ivy Leaguers, masters degree holders, widely published journos, mathmeticians, economists - a right bunch of nutjobs. You must be really really intelligent to be so critical of this motley crew of intellectuals.

ndm

The latest New York Times hire at his intellectually laziest writes:

-- How much do you prize equality and ease of life? The more you do, the more you'll favor a European approach to the relationship between state and society. How much do you prize voluntarism, entrepreneurship, and the value of lives oriented around service to one's family, and to God? The more you do, the more you'll find to like in the American arrangement.

I hope Ross Douthat is not proud of writing crap like "service to one's family, and to God" being American virtues.

Jimimac

Mark Steyn gives me an informing read and analyses beyond the understanding of his something-rate detractors. Massey is appreciated in this busy world in that I can overlook his feeble contribution knowing that I am not missing a single thing which would help my understanding of the world I live in. I only hope that Mark Steyn does not bother to give Massey a reply which might make Massey think that anybody cares about his opinion.

David P

As Roger Scruton has put it...

"The real source of social decline in our day lies in the tendency to mortgage our future for the gratification of those who are living now. The free market, private enterprise, and the profit motive are not corrupting in themselves; they become so, however, just as soon as people lose all consciousness of the generations stretching before and after them and treat society as a means of present plunder."

Steyn is wrong when he says "Europeanism is like Communism: the less time you've spent living it in practice the better disposed you are to it in theory". As Alex's figures show, people living it are loving it! It's the fact that you can have such a laugh when you stop considering the future that makes the European model so appealing to self indulgent people.

Steyn often quotes Oscar van den Boogaard... "I have never learned to fight for my freedom. I was only good at enjoying it". This is what Steyn is really talking about when he talks about Europeanisation. The moment this mentality embeds itself in the American psyche, America is doomed. Obama is leading it there.

Kensington Kuffir

Twofirty: "There are large towns in England without a sizeable Muslim population at all..."

Can you imagine a citizen of any country outside north-western Europe writing such a sentence without (apparently) a sense of withering irony?

More to the point, what do you think your grandfather would have made of this apparent plea in mitigation for Britain's value system?

The Bellman

Not as O/T as you might think: A current NHS anti-drinking ad attempts to blackmail parents emotionally by superimposing a pint pot over a baby's bottle, with the strapline that 'children learn their behaviour from their parents'.

If this unpleasant, pinch-faced, joyless, puritanical, arrogant and intrusive government gets it way, it seems my children will learn their behaviour from them - or the lowest-charging ad agency - instead.

I can only pray God for the safety of my grand-children's health, spiritual and mental.

Wakefield Tolbert

A couple of other pointers about this Euro crap discussion.

First of all, Americans are far less likely to disdain Europeans in general than the haughty and condescending way the Euros look at Americans, with whom they regard with degrees of either outright suspicion or the curiosity one finds at the exotic animal side shows. Their condescension is unwarranted, but trained into them from birth on the education of conformity and statism. Granted, some of this disparity as well as lack of learnedness about the world in general probably hails (for America's part) from our piss poor education system built around benefits for the teachers' unions more so than real educational reform. But that's just a guess. Europe's education system, for all its multi-culti mush and slush, is actually slightly more elitist in the weeding out process. That's a good thing in the final analysis. The lone excpetion being Germany, which has taken banning things now honed to a fine artform, and even outlaws homeschooling and other alternative reforms that have shown to work quite well elsewhere on the whole planet, for example. But the point is perhaps most Americans due their educrats can't place their own hometown on a map, much less impress your average French chambermaid with linquisitc prowess or knowledge of where Antwerp or Paris or Bristol is. Much less London. True enough. But then, most nations the size of the US have simliar states of unawares among the citizenry. (And imperial ambitions that make our alleged ones look like Boy Scout summer camps, to boot).

Our true democracy is older than yours, and most nations or our size got that way not from taking the words of Thomas Jefferson and applying them continent wide, but rather Ye Olde Imperial way of Edward Longshanks. Dig?

We had one big donnybrook in the 1860s among ourselves and that was about it. We didn't have rule by entire families, kings, effette lordships, strong men on prancing horses dangling with metals and jewels, or warlords bearing down with panzers to stanch before we figured out how to have all of us paint on a larger social canvass despite regional differences that exist to this moment.

So spare us the smirks.

In the meantime, Europe's obsession with bashing America, a habit that for the most part the American citizenry does not return the gracious favor of the snideness. We have true freedom of speech. Not lipservice of the smirk kind of the bland Statist "public interest" criteria that stifles the word. We have, for the most part, a residual cultural confidence beyond Happy Face Multi-Culti wherein faith and other issues still has the vital primal role in life that Euros have subcontracted out to their various government nannies. We think getting things done is paramount--not whether pipsqueaks on international bodies that contain input from the Sudan, Cuba, and the Maldives and La France happen to agree, nor do we take opinions from those who think that the magical powers of "containment" of men like Saddam Hussein is a wonderful thing. We found out it was an expensive dictator management program that starved people out.

Second. As to those "happiness indexes" we hear about so much, it depends on which poll you want to believe and how the questions are couched.

Well-first of all, as it concerns some nations, like Germany, where one-third of the respondents to some polls think the US planned the 911 attacks on their own cities...well...a sense of perspective on some Euro-nuttiness might be in order. That was the input from native citizenry of Germany. Not from the Imams broadcasting Jihad. Though the stats no doubt are similar.

On the gloom factor, there is no doubt, as Steyn says in many places, that societies in decline can be affible and downright fun places. Free childcare, free eldercare, lots of vacation, and a workweek that would be the envy of every American banker from Atlanta to Frisco. Yep. Who can deny that. But the problem here is that what starts as fun time and cheer ends in indolence and slumber from life's realities.

Funny thing, though, about this "socialization" aspect of the modern Welfare State:

Rather than make people delighted to give, seeing that it is done by force, it has the opposite effect. Europeans are closed in to a system where, ironically, they seemingly care little about the future (as demonstrated by their sagging birthrates--and having kids and thus extending one's own progeny to the future is THE biggest indicator of a promising future, not fun at the beach). Do not bother us with various issues, they declare. Call me when I get back from the beach. Americans are far more charitable both with their time and money of any people on the wretched earth. We have to struggle and thus empathize with those who do also at a lower and more precarious level. The Euros have their unsustainable benefits and handouts, and damn the statistics, we'll just have immigrants do the menial work and against demographic reality wipe the fannies of the old folks in a few decades. No doubt the kids, what few there are, will find it rather discouraging to be taxed at 85% working at a fast food joint, to handle the load of the welfare state come a few decades from this writing.

Charles Murray said it best on the insulating effects of the Nanny State's takeover of primal life functions: When life is an extended playtime and childhood, the harder questions of life, philosophy, policy, and struggle, become mere irritants not to be bothered with. Not a good thing.
At some point the bills come due, and no, not all of them can be pawned off on your declining rates of children, or the bustling immigrants who'll supplant your culture. Your churches are emptying and now serve mostly as social outreach centers to study alternative lifestyle encounter groups, but the mosques are filling up rapidly. The maternity wards are rather quiet. The old folks' homes are kinda busy. Except for burked women praising Allah for yet another boy named..... "Muhammed".

Hmmm. Where do you declare the Ponzi scheme gets to end?

Don't answer that.

Polls taken in 2005 indicate that for the Happy Factor, all this fun time is not really making a concurrent level of play and fun. What do the Euros do with all that free time? They don't participate much in church (mostly being secular) don't go for the homophobic Boy Scouts or participate in civic duties. They work fewer hours and don't marry as often and have fewer kids and even at that the State takes the rugrats off their hands for hours a day so both parents can make money, in turn, to pay the state. What gives? Certainly not baby making? What else?

Well, hard to tell. Polls indicate, contra the author above, that at or around the first anniversary of 911, 61 percent of Americans said they were optimistic about the future. Contrast this with 43 percent of Canuks, 42% of Britons, 29% of the French, 23% of Russians, and--dig this--merely 15% of Germans. I doubt there has been some vast turnaround on a dime as the author suggests. That would be difficult to swallow.

Harry Palmer

How boring the Spectator has become since it got rid of Mr Steyn, who is witty, intelligence and provocative, and replaced him with boring dullards like Mr Massie.

A shame.

Alf Tupper

Dr Massie.

Upon re-reading this, I note that you have lowered yourself to the level of mere invective.

You really should leave the spittle-flecked vitriol to us wingnut experts you know.

Wakefield Tolbert

I have never understood the ultra-right's fascination with an "all must have prizes mentality" where any two-bit bigot whining about the Islamization of Europe or the Europeanization of America is given a column and regarded as a Messiah by a bunch of half-witted morons.

That, writes political analyst Master Yoda, is why you fail, dear Luke....

Paul Lay

At least two of the EU countries mentioned are bankrupt. So much for happiness . . . at the expense of Herr Schmidt who will soon be cashing in his chips.

Pierre Zwingli

Does the author of this column think of himself as a serious commentator?

Mr. Steyn was, is still, wrong on the Iraq war. This war was unnecessary, based on a blatant lie, and has not made us safer.

But I think he is right on two topics: demography ultimately rules and there is a movement (probably embodied by Mr. Obama today) in the US wanting to enlarge the public sector and limit personal responsibilities and freedom in exchange for more safety nets. I think this is obvious and this is what I would also call "Europeanization".

ndm

That, writes political analyst Master Yoda, is why you fail, dear Luke....

I guess I just take the World more seriously than a two-dimensional, wooden-plotted film.

FriarTuck

Old Stock Europeans are so happy they are extinguishing themselves and their civilization to boot.

One great thing about living on Airstrip One is that you get the cameras everywhere and the bombs. Talk about a twofer.

B Clarkson

If Britain's recent example of how they welcome home the brave soldiers who risk their lives on their country's behalf is "European" we Canucks and Yanks will pass thank you very much.

kivi

The end result of Europeanisation was illustrated very well in France and Germany during the heat wave of 2003 when 15000 mostly elderly people died in France alone because the state turned out to be a very poor nanny. Many younger family members were taking the traditional month off and couldn't be bothered even to return early to see to Grandmere's funeral arrangements. The dead were stacked up like cordwood in hospitals and funeral homes.

The result of voting for a government who promises to take care of you is that you are at their not so tender mercies when things go bad and you no longer have family ties either because they've all contracted out what used to be family responsibilities to the state, just as you did.

Fergus Pickering

I don't give a damn for equality though I would like to be richer. Ease of life sounds nice though. I'll vote for that.As for having children, I've had my two and they (I hope) will have four each so that will be our duty done to repopulate the world with English persons and by that I mean REAL English persons, not sad quirks of the passport office. Oh, and it doesn't do to boast of ignorance, of the French language or anything else.

Rob Herron

Wakefield Tolbert said it for me. BTW, I'm Canadian (as is Steyn)

David B

I don't know if 'Europeanism' exists, but anti-Europeanism certainly seems to...

hennesli

looks like you really stirred up the hornets nest here Alex!
good piece by the way.

the problem with ignoramuses like Steyn and his demented followers is that they seem to understand Europes muslim population as some kind of monolithic entity working together in a conspiracy. In reality considerable friction and cultural differences exist among immigrant Muslim groups and many Muslims come to Europe not to import Islamism but on the contrary to it.

It matters not, the stupid will see 20 idiots holding offensive placards in Luton and decide they speak for Europes entire muslim population.

B Clarkson

hennesli

That is as may be, but those who are opposed to European style statism would note that in Luton the police, ie the state, arrested the sensible and courageous soul who peacefully yet forcefully protested against the outrageous treatment of the soldiers in question. May I also point out that it did not go without notice elsewhere in the world that the cartoon protests in London (with the signs extolling the new holocaust forthcoming and promises of beheadings to non-believers)resulted in similar arrests of those with the temerity to carry signs decrying such barbarism in the home of the Magna Carta. Ignoramuses the world over also have ready access to the videos of English fire brigades having to call for police protection as they are assaulted during the performance of their duties in what, by all accounts, are no go areas for infidels. French readers of this post, of course, will be quite familiar with the above scenarios. Perhaps we heathens in the colonies lack the sophistication to discern the nuance in these barbaric displays but I make no apology for drawing my own conclusions.