Anne Applebaum has commented on Theodore Dalrymple’s piece on Europe’s doomed future by listing three aspects – political leadership, embracing the new Europe and stop being obsessed with the US – that she believes are currently holding Europe back. As Anne says, the list is of course much longer and without much difficulty we can throw in political apathy, demographics and unintegrated Muslims, but the overarching theme to me seems to be a deep rooted fear of change which in turn finds its origins in being a pampered and somewhat self-indulgent polity. So to take Applebaum’s points, there is not a lot of political capital going around to take on drastic reforms, immigration from the former Soviet world has sparked serious unease with unskilled yet highly motivated workers competing with Europe’s lethargic workforce, and finally: the opposite of blasting the US would be embracing it, which again, implies some drastic change.

There is a lot of Euro-doomsday commentary making the rounds at the moment and I for one was one of the earlier ones to take on and promote that topic, but we need to apply some caution. Over-simplification yields terrible analysis.

Firstly, there is not one monolith called Europe and any probe needs to make very clear the distinction between the various parts and groups that constitute today’s Europe. Secondly, and that is something that Jay Reding correctly notices, there is no place for American complacency. Americans do have some challenges with their current set of leaders, are not exactly clever or pro-active in embracing its immigration issues and are fairly unengaged when it comes to casting a ballot. But there’s one thing that Americans got right from day one and they still know how to deal with it far better than their ancestors: change.