European Civilisation Has Sown the Seeds of Its Own Decline and Fall (Should be required reading!)

The Times [UK] ^ | June 3, 2005 | Gerard Baker

[quidnunc]

On Sunday night, at precisely the moment the French were angrily delivering their resounding “non” to Europe’s would-be nation-builders, I happened to be in Istanbul, in the genial company of a transatlantic crew of foreign-policy thinkers.

As the boat on which we were having dinner bobbed gently up the busy Bosphorus, it struck me that this was not a bad place from which to contemplate the latest European crisis. The waters that mark the very end of Europe provide a useful historical context in which to consider, what is for some, the End of Europe.

Out here, beyond the lights winking from the grand mansions that hug the Asian shoreline, begins the vast land mass into which the founders of Western civilisation poured in search of treasure and conquest. Millennia later, to the demoralised successors of those same enterprising Europeans, the traffic seems all the other way. Asia offers only threat, not promise; the future one of outsourced telemarketers in India and offshore manufacturing in China.

From here, too, at a more mortal crisis in Europe’s history, the Ottoman Empire stretched to every point of the compass, around the Black Sea, across the Middle East, into North Africa and deeper and deeper into a collapsing Europe. Today, it seems that the Caliph’s successors are reclaiming that territory, only this time moving more or less unopposed towards their goal.

These twin threats — the economic challenge of fiercely competitive globalisation and a political challenge to the culturally deracinated, splintering societies — are driving Europe into debilitating turmoil.

-snip-

[Adiemus]

Great tag line! I love it!

[lemura]

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?

[Michael81Dus]

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

[Eurotwit]

Thanks for the ping.

Interesting article. The Times has many good writers.

Cheers.

[A CA Guy]

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

[Tolik]

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.

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[sarasota]

FYI

[.cnI redruM]

>>>>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.

[DuncanWaring]

...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.

[HP8753]

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.

[EdReform]

BTTT

[neverdem]

bump for later

[baseballmom]

bumping a good read

[NZerFromHK]

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.

[NZerFromHK]

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).

[Dad yer funny]

bookmark and thanks

[NZerFromHK]

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. ;-)

[AFPhys]

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.

[Atlantic Friend]

"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.