The End of Europe

Europe as we know it is slowly going out of business. Since French and Dutch voters rejected the proposed constitution of the European Union, we've heard countless theories as to why: the unreality of trying to forge 25 E.U. countries into a United States of Europe; fear of ceding excessive power to Brussels, the E.U. capital; and an irrational backlash against globalization. Whatever their truth, these theories miss a larger reality: Unless Europe reverses two trends — low birthrates and meager economic growth — it faces a bleak future of rising domestic discontent and falling global power. Actually, that future has already arrived.

Ever since 1498, after Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope and opened trade to the Far East, Europe has shaped global history, for good and ill. It settled North and South America, invented modern science, led the Industrial Revolution, oversaw the slave trade, created huge colonial empires, and unleashed the world's two most destructive wars. This pivotal Europe is now vanishing — and not merely because it's overshadowed by Asia and the United States.

All this is bad for Europe — and the United States. A weak European economy is one reason that the world economy is shaky and so dependent on American growth. Preoccupied with divisions at home, Europe is history's has-been. It isn't a strong American ally, not simply because it disagrees with some U.S. policies but also because it doesn't want to make the commitments required of a strong ally. Unwilling to address their genuine problems, Europeans become more reflexively critical of America. This gives the impression that they're active on the world stage, even as they're quietly acquiescing in their own decline.

The wages of non-college educated workers relative to college educated workers have plummetted during the period in which (surprise!) middle class birth rates dropped. The glut of college graduates in the 60s reduced the value of a liberal arts degree to what had been that of a high school diploma a year before.

Another baleful result of such degree inflation is saddling young people with tens of thousands of dollars in debt when they could be starting families. Debts that will not be paid off until they start making real money in their thirties.

So we see two demographically destructive results of the demand for a college diploma for a good job.
1. Causing middle class families to limit the number of children they have to those they can afford to send to college.
2. Forcing young professionals to defer marriage and childrearing until they are out of debt and thus reducing their reproductive years to a brief 30-35 window.

This is about 90 years too late. The end of Europe began in August 1914. In the ensuing 30 years of war, depression and war, the material and cultural resources assembled in the previous centuries were largely destroyed.

Oswald Spengler's "The Decline of the West" was published in 1922.

An excerpt --

The future of the West is not a limitless tending upwards and onwards for all time towards our presents ideals, but a single phenomenon of history, strictly limited and defined as to form and duration, which covers a few centuries nd can be viewed and, in essentials, calculated from available precedents. With this enters the age of gigantic conflicts, in which we find ourselves today. It is the transition from Napoleonism to Caesarism, a general phase of evolution, which occupies at least two centuries and can be shown to exist in all Cultures. The Chinese call it Shan-Kwo, the "period of the Contending States." In the Gracchan revolution, which was already [133 B.C.] heralded by a first Servile War, the younger Scipio was secretly murdered and C. Gracchus openly slain---the first who as Princeps and the first who as Tribune were political centers in themselves amidst a world become formless. When, in 104 B.C. the urban masses of Rome for the first time lawlessly and tumultuously invested a private person, Marius, with Imperium, the deeper importance of the drama then enacted is comparable with that of assumption of the mythic Emperor-title by the ruler of Ch'in in 288 B.C..

The place of the permanent armies as we know them will gradually be taken by professional forces of volunteer war-keen soldiers; and from millions we shall revert to hundreds of thousands. But ipso facto this second century will be one of actually Contending States. These armies are not substitutes for war---they are for war, and they want war. Within two generations it will be they whose will prevails over all the comfortables put together. In these wars of theirs for the heritage of the whole world, continents will be staked---India, China, South Africa, Russia, Islam called out, new technics and tactics played and counter-played.... The last race to keep its form, the last living tradition, the last leaders who have both at their back, will pass through and onward, victors.

The idealist of the early democracy regarded popular education as enlightenment pure and simple---but it is precisely this that smooths the path for the coming Caesars of the world. The last century [the 19th] was the winter of the West, the victory of materialism and scepticism, of socialism, parliamentarianism, and money. But in this century blood and instinct will regain their rights against the power of money and intellect. The era of individualism, liberalism and democracy, of humanitarianism and freedom, is nearing its end. The masses will accept with resignation the victory of the Caesars, the strong men, and will obey them. Life will descend to a level of general uniformity, a new kind of primitivism, and the world will be better for it.....

They're done. The Muslim population that has infiltrated Europe has a very high birthrate and their Socialistic policies have killed innovation.

Interesting that you brought that up. I recently had a conversation with my son about WWII history and the current WOT. I told him that his great grandparents helped liberate Europe and I was very afraid his generation would be faced with liberating it again.

When he asked why, I told him that countries like France have allowed radical muslims to gain a foothold in their country and they are starting to get to a point where they will have representation in the national government. I told him when they out number the French natives, they will install shira law and become a nuclear power. A nuclear power that will want to dominate and blackmail the US and anyone who disagrees.

Provided Iran doesn't beat them to it....

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