Heirs to Fortuyn? Muslim immigration and sclerotic welfare states push Europe right (sort of).

The City Journal ^ | Spring, 2009 | Bruce Bawer

[Scanian]

When the New Left emerged in the 1960s, something else was born that would mark American elites for decades thereafter: the notion that social-democratic Western Europe was far superior to the capitalist United States. Pity the poor American professor whose every junket to a European academic conference was marred by his continental colleagues’ sneering over cocktails about his nation’s shame du jour—Vietnam, Watergate, Iraq—or about American racism, capital punishment, or health care. For much of the American Left, Western Europe was nothing less than an abstract symbol of progressive utopia.

This rosy view was never accurate, of course. Europe’s socialized health care was blighted by outrageous (and sometimes deadly) waiting lists and rationing, to name just one example. To name another: Timbro, a Swedish think tank, found in 2004 that Sweden was poorer than all but five U.S. states and Denmark poorer than all but nine. But in recent years, something has happened to complicate the Left’s fanciful picture even further: Western European voters’ widespread reaction against social democracy.

The shift has two principal, and related, causes. The more significant one is that over the last three decades, social-democratic Europe’s political, cultural, academic, and media elites have presided over, and vigorously defended, a vast wave of immigration from the Muslim world—the largest such influx in human history. According to Foreign Affairs, Muslims in Western Europe numbered between 15 and 20 million in 2005.

[samtheman]

This is an excellent piece. If you only read one long piece in FR this week, let it be this one.

[La Lydia]

The states such as Texas that still have working brain parts should form an anti-Washington party like Italy's Northern League (Lega Nord), which is anti-Rome and gains seats every election.

Lega Nord opposes lower taxes, especially for families and small enterprises and an end to public money being used to bail out big businesses. Lega Nord also supports the protection of traditional foods and also called for a revision of the quota system of the Common Agricultural Policy; it has a tough stance on crime, illegal immigration, especially from Muslim countries, and terrorism. It supports the promotion of immigration from non-Muslim countries in order to protect the "Christian Identity" of Italy and Europe, which, according to party officials, should be based on "Judeo-Christian heritage"). They are in the "conservation but not regulation" corner of the environmental debate.

[Scanian]

Glad you liked the post, samtheman.

[samtheman]

I just finished it. It is very very good.

It provides some very important background for what is happening in this country because all the leftists elitists in this country — all the professors, all the NEA leftlets, all the media leftbots, all the Pelosi boot-lickers in and out of government, not to mention The King Zero Leftist Himself — all of them, to a one, every single one of them, worship Western European Socialism and Appeasement as the ultimate Economic Utopia and Bastion of Moral Enlightenment.

This article makes it crystal clear what it is that all our domestic dirt-bags are actually worshiping, emulating, and striving so hard to turn us into.

This is background material that all of us need to be aware of.

[conservative cat]

Bookmarking for later read.

[VR-21]

Good Post. A preview of what we will face if we don’t soon wise up.

[PapaBear3625]

From the article, the gays are getting tired of Muslim gay-bashing, and are deserting the Left for the Right. And the regular citizens are getting pissed over cuts in health care, public universities, police, etc because of increasing welfare costs to support the immigrant Muslim population.

[brianr10]

Friedman’s statement is true. You can have a welfare state or open borders, but not both.