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European Civilisation Has Sown the Seeds of Its Own Decline and Fall (Should be required reading!)
The Times [UK] ^ | June 3, 2005 | Gerard Baker

Posted on 06/02/2005 6:49:01 PM PDT by quidnunc

click here to read article


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To: A_Conservative_Chinese

Great tag line! I love it!


41 posted on 06/02/2005 9:47:46 PM PDT by Adiemus
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To: happyathome
cause the UK to begin to disengage

The Brits know what side of their bread is buttered. Hyper Anglo-American capitalism is the present & future. Why hitch your cart as second banana to France/Germany when you can be the 'go-to' guy for the world's most powerful country?

42 posted on 06/02/2005 9:55:42 PM PDT by lemura
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To: datura

Oh I love your arrogance. Makes your point so self-contradicting.


43 posted on 06/02/2005 11:54:51 PM PDT by Michael81Dus (Deutschland kommt wieder!)
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To: AFPhys

Thanks for the ping.

Interesting article. The Times has many good writers.

Cheers.


44 posted on 06/03/2005 12:22:17 AM PDT by Eurotwit (WI)
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To: littlelilac

We should express our good will by sending them our unions and illegal aliens.


45 posted on 06/03/2005 12:24:43 AM PDT by A CA Guy (God Bless America, God bless and keep safe our fighting men and women.)
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To: quidnunc; Cicero; Lando Lincoln; .cnI redruM; Valin; yonif; SJackson; dennisw; monkeyshine; ...

Very interesting article and good comments on the thread. Don't miss cicero's post #10

    This ping list is not author-specific for articles I'd like to share. Some for perfect moral clarity, some for provocative thoughts; or simply interesting articles I'd hate to miss myself. (I don't have to agree with the author 100% to feel the need to share an article.) I will try not to abuse the ping list and not to annoy you too much, but on some days there is more of good stuff that is worthy attention. You can see the list of articles I pinged to lately on my page.

       Besides this one, I keep separate PING lists for my favorite authors Victor Davis Hanson, Lee Harris, David Warren, Orson Scott Card. You are welcome in or out, just freepmail me (and note which PING list you are talking about).

46 posted on 06/03/2005 6:30:10 AM PDT by Tolik
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To: Atlantic Friend

FYI


47 posted on 06/03/2005 6:44:37 AM PDT by sarasota
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To: Cicero
>>>>Muslims are flooding in because Europeans wanted cheap workers to replace the children they didn't have.

Like the essay itself, you've made a good point, but omitted key factors. When an employer hires a foreign national, particularly an illegal foreign national, he generally enjoys tremendous cost advantages over a competing employer who hires citizens via the legally mandated, and government regulated hiring practices.

The hourly wage paid upfront may or may not decline, depending on how willing these Muslims are to work for peanuts, but the burden paid on this labor rate will decline substantially.

The G&A of paying national pension taxes and proving citizenship is deducted. The cost of health care, assuming the Euros are stupid enough to give illegals free emergency room care, goes away also. Imagine how much cheaper your payroll can become, if that inconvenient burden of patriotism just goes away.

A lot of employers in the US already have. This is how we have approx. 20mil undocumented illegal workers in the US right now. I'm sure a lot of businessmen and organized criminals in Europe have done likewise.
48 posted on 06/03/2005 7:59:27 AM PDT by .cnI redruM ("There is no virtue in compulsory government charity, and there is no virtue in advocating it.-PJ O')
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To: TheGeezer
...did anyone write stuff like this at the threshold of the medieval period?

Yes, but it had to be read on teletypes with 300-baud modems.

49 posted on 06/03/2005 8:08:09 AM PDT by DuncanWaring (The Lord uses the good ones; the bad ones use the Lord.)
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To: quidnunc
It owed its years of peace not to some solemn intra-European comity but to the hard steel of US firepower, primed to defend Europe from the Soviet Union.

Damn straight,and don't you forget it.

50 posted on 06/03/2005 8:08:45 AM PDT by HP8753 (My cat is an NTSB Standard,The Naval Observatory calls me for time corrections.)
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To: quidnunc

BTTT


51 posted on 06/03/2005 8:13:11 AM PDT by EdReform (Free Republic - helping to keep our country a free republic. Thank you for your financial support!)
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To: EdReform

bump for later


52 posted on 06/03/2005 8:52:54 AM PDT by neverdem (May you be in heaven a half hour before the devil knows that you're dead.)
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To: quidnunc

bumping a good read


53 posted on 06/03/2005 10:26:06 AM PDT by baseballmom
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To: Nyboe; Congressman Billybob; AFPhys

With regards to posts 9, 33, and 36,

I think one of the problems is of perspective. At that time it seemed to many foreigners that "yes, the US is growing at 4%, but hey, we in Europe/Japan/Asia/wherever are growing at 6/8/10/12%! We are destined to overtake you!". This is the idea you get if you read any the London Times of that time, let alone Le Monde.

Of course the problem is that institutional economics's role was ignored. Welfare dependency, and more importantly, national culture of entrepreneurship vs conventionality, rule of law, etc played a critical role even from 1980 onwards. No one in Europe and Japan paid any attention to what you Yanks were are are doing on these areas until too late, and the one mistake that (P.R.) China, India etc are going to repeat soon.


54 posted on 06/03/2005 4:15:17 PM PDT by NZerFromHK ("US libs...hypocritical, naive, pompous...if US falls it will be because of these" - Tao Kit (HK))
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To: Nyboe
um.. the Berlin wall came down in 1989... but the article says after the soviet threat was gone but before the tech revolution of the early 1990's Europeans were enjoying a pampered life with accelerating prosperity...

And another problem I have is that this "pampered" life period was not really that enviable when you remove your dusted issues of Reader's Digest or even MSMs like Time and read reports on Europe at that time. Europe was also under recession, and I don't remember when they have ever been in strong growth since 1989. (Some argue that for a couple of years after reunification, western Germany enjoyed this due to government-subsidized economic activities aimed in rebuilding the eastern part of the country, but there are other contradicting reports from Der Spiegel etc).

55 posted on 06/03/2005 4:22:50 PM PDT by NZerFromHK ("US libs...hypocritical, naive, pompous...if US falls it will be because of these" - Tao Kit (HK))
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To: quidnunc

bookmark and thanks


56 posted on 06/03/2005 4:23:55 PM PDT by Dad yer funny
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To: mc6809e

I agree. This is the logical conclusion of relativism - one that the Left has no answer. I predict after you say this, the leftists in front of you will get up and try to beat you up. ;-)


57 posted on 06/03/2005 4:30:14 PM PDT by NZerFromHK ("US libs...hypocritical, naive, pompous...if US falls it will be because of these" - Tao Kit (HK))
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To: NZerFromHK
Good comment.

The continuing US recovery from the "Great Society"/Watergate/Carter "malaise" has been due to our crunching inflation with monetary policy, increasing productivity with taxation policy, and decelerating the socialism that had been sapping so much of our strength.

We still have the ability to improve in each of these areas.

The Europeans did quite the opposite. They have to first stop their socialism and cut taxes - but I have no idea how some of them can possibly do that without first declaring bankruptcy and reneging on some of their commitments.
58 posted on 06/03/2005 7:40:46 PM PDT by AFPhys ((.Praying for President Bush, our troops, their families, and all my American neighbors..))
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To: Cicero

"Europe never for a minute wanted to spring to America's aid after 9/11; except for England, it only pretended to sympathize."

Oh really ? then we should tell our thousands of European (British, French, German, Italian, Polishn, etc...) troops in Afghanistan and Iraq to pull-out, since you have so little use for them.

"So, the essay is good as far as it goes, but it omits key factors."

Same goes with your posts, Cicero. Go see on the US CENTCOM sites a few thousands of key points you chose to omit.


59 posted on 07/26/2005 8:13:07 AM PDT by Atlantic Friend (Cursum Perficio)
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