[AntiGuv]

Yes. Next question?

[Flavius]

geesh so many words when one can just type

YES

[jjm2111]

yuppers.

[ken5050]

Is the Pope Catholic?

Does a bear s**t in the woods?

Next......

[PeteB570]

Yes!

[dalereed]

Looks like a roadmap of where the US is heading.

[Recon Dad]

I like his take on the EU and its purpose.

[DB]

I believe this article describes the situation well.

Too bad we're on the same path...

[tonycavanagh]

re :Is “Old Europe” Doomed?

No, each decade we have doomsayers telling us that our way of life is under threat, we have had plagues, pestilence one destructive war after another Empires have risen and empires have fallen and still Europe always bounced back.

There is talk about a falling birth rate but the the baby boom was a aberration caused by the end of the war increase health care and people having large families.

Before the war you had large families but some would die during birth or to child hood diseases.

Ok we will for short time have a aging population but when the new generation ages the figures will go back to normal.

As for the Islamic threat, Europe is waking up to the idea that we multi cultural ism in its present form is not workable and you will see as we already have a hardening of attitudes.

[Buffettfan]

The answer is YES

[Ninian Dryhope]

"create administrative jobs on an unprecedented scale, whose principle function consists of obstruction of other people as they try to create wealth"

Boy, isn't this the truth?

[R.W.Ratikal]

It's beginning to look more and more like Old Europe is indeed doomed. Look at what is happening. The birth rate is declining and is negative in some Western European nations.

At the same time Third World immigrants are flooding in with a birth rate like maggots. These masses do not assimilate and are probably not able to merge into a fully civilized country.

Already there are demands that civilized laws be changed to accommodate primitive fundamentalism, the very thing that has held back development in the Third World.

All great civilizations in the past that have fallen have been a victim of massive demographics shifts of inferior or less developed populations. (President Bush, call your office.)

[Tolik]

Interesting analysis from the always sharp Theodore Dalrymple!

This ping list is not author-specific for articles I'd like to share. Some for the 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 all 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 the good stuff that is worthy of attention. You can see the list of articles I pinged to lately  on  my page.
You are welcome in or out, just freepmail me (and note which PING list you are talking about). Besides this one, I keep 2 separate PING lists for my favorite authors Victor Davis Hanson and Orson Scott Card.  

[Rummyfan]

Good sober assessment. Time will tell.

[wtc911]

It is not doomed, it is dead already. The new europe is deciding what it will be, either a neo-fascist isolationist stronghold or an islamo-fascist colony.

[KC_Conspirator]

I do agree with one thing the author says; this radical, headstrong, insistence on imposing harsh socialism is killing any economic growth in old europe. This in turn is going to lead to alot of different social and economic problems.

[Billthedrill]

Another brilliant Dalrymple exposition, and thanks for posting it. Too many good lines to comment on all of them, but this one seems to put the blame for the current ennui squarely on multiculturalism, where in my opinion it belongs:

This loss of cultural confidence is particularly important at a time of mass immigration from very alien cultures, an immigration that can be successfully negotiated...only if the host nations believe themselves to be the bearers of cultures into which immigrants wish, or ought to wish, to integrate, assimilate, and make their own.

The alternative, as Dalrymple points out, is a predatory, migratory culture that regards the current inhabitants of their intended settlement as culturally inferior and there only as an accident of geography. (American Indians may recall that approach with some bitterness.) Illiteracy and religious fanaticism feed this insularity. The result is a generation of young Islamic men who will, as conquering barbarians always do, take what they want because no one can make them stop.

Europe's demographic difficulties are perfectly addressable with lower population density and high technology were it not for the immigration difficulties that make the transition to an older, smaller population imbalanced and unstable. One might have said the same thing about the Western Roman empire. The issue clearly is what the nature of the population influx will be and whether it will be controlled. And the uncomfortable truth is that due to the stifling regulatory environment, a young Polish entrepreneur hoping to build wealth is not as welcome as a young Algerian with no job skills and whose only hope of wealth must come from the dole. The two have entirely different expectations and abilities (and willingness) to assimilate.

Europe is not doomed. It will change. The question is whether it will be able to control that change or cede that control to others. And some of those others don't have a theme park for seniors in mind.

[jordan8]

This loss of cultural confidence is particularly important at a time of mass immigration from very alien cultures, an immigration that can be successfully negotiated (as it has been in the past, or in the United States up to the era of multiculturalism) only if the host nations believe themselves to be the bearers of cultures into which immigrants wish, or ought to wish, to integrate, assimilate, and make their own.

Not a bad article except for this bit. Immigration cannot be successfully negotiated, not at the level where the natives will soon become a minority. This is simply a PC lie told out of fear. Something also has to be said about the line "in the United States up to the era a multiculturalism." The era of multiculturalism began with the '65 immigration act. The FACT of multi-racialism begat multiculturalism and was virtually inevitable. He puts the horse before the cart, here. The assimilation of the pre '65 European immigration is also exaggerated, this immigration had profound political and social consequences, a fact acknowledged by Congress with the tightening of immigration laws in the 20s.

[white trash redneck]

Europe remains little more than an anti-semitic theme park with quaint architecture.