Free Republic

Europe’s EU project has reached its limits: a centralized bureaucracy replacing politics itself, draining legitimacy, and pointing back toward sovereign, competitive states. Europe has reached the end of an era. Not the end of its history, but the end of its false form. For decades, the European Union served as the great substitute project of a continent that no longer dared to think politically. It promised peace without power, order without a people, unity without roots, and prosperity without cost. That was its founding lie, and it was a lie from the very beginning. Political order does not grow out...

Young Islamist gunmen from Hamas and their nationalist Fatah counterparts have until recently been killing each other in the streets of Gaza and the West Bank. Granted there are political and cultural explanations for such violent behavior. But the role of demographics - specifically the vast numbers of young men in the Palestinian Authority - must also be factored in if one wants a better understanding of events in the Arab-Israel conflict. Political scientist Samuel Huntington, author of The Clash of Civilizations, has argued that this huge reservoir of young men aged 15-30 provides a natural pool of instability and...