Or how the rising gold price presages the end of Britain's love affair with New Labour. A classic, really.

The latest poll numbers are in and Christopher Caldwell explains how Royal has been able to come this close, thanks to the Bayrou vote:

" ... the election will be decided by who gets the votes of Bayrou's 18 percent. Bayrou said he would not endorse anyone. But, having said that "Nicolas Sarkozy, through his closeness to the business world and media powers, through his taste for intimidation and threats, will concentrate powers like never before," he didn't have to.

One week to go.

Canada's conservative government came out with its plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions last week, a plan that in general has been described as 'politically expedient' and 'staking out the middle ground'. And if that is indeed the case it will for now be sufficient to take the wind out of the Liberal opposition's Goresque green momentum, while at the same time keeping a deeply unsettled business sector at ease.

Yet, some constituencies will never be satisfied and the green movement, notably Al Gore himself who called the plan a fraud yesterday. But prime-minister Harper is experiencing dissent and concerns on the right flank too and not without reason. The plan to implement an outright ban to sell and use traditional light bulbs has provided excellent fodder to evoke the advent of the eco-fascist state. Columnist George Jonas explains:

But for nuts we don't need to go all the way to Iran. The Green Gestapo of the environment seems ready to launch nuts right here at home. Eco-fascists share the self-righteous arrogance of Islamo-fascists, safety-Nazis and other control freaks. They're like the multicultural censors excising "Merry Christmas!" or the feminist ones neutering the word "fisherman" and substituting "fisher" as the mot juste. They're the anti-gun crusaders obliging us to register Grandpa's squirrel-plonker; they're the Victorian don't-step-on-the-grass crowd; they're our version of the Persian dress police. They're prepared to enforce a government-regulated climate in Canada, indoors and outdoors, literally and figuratively, itching to counter global warming with an economic ice age.

Environmentalism has alternately taken on the guise of religion and political extremism, yet in both cases it is essentially unchecked fanaticism. And it has traction. If you can get a free-trading conservative like Harper to sign-off on a blanket light bulb ban you know that one side of the debate is having an incredible amount of success in getting its message across. To hear Al Gore describing these plans as a fraud is exactly the kind of indicator we need to have to know that the stage of reasoned debate about climate change is long over. The fanatics now own the environmental debate, and they're winning it.

In an LA Times column, Ian Buruma explains the importance of 'context' when dealing with the conflict between 'hate speech' and 'free speech':

When it comes to banning hateful words, it must be imperative to show that they are designed to cause violence and, moreover, that they are likely to do so. Banning or censoring historic texts seems pointless because they can be put in the framework of the times when they were written.

Buruma prefers a US-style constitutional right to free speech believing that it does instill a cautionary instinct in most citizens to use this right responsibly. He's right there I think, but it should be noted that banning certain forms of speech because "they are designed to incite violence" is a huge legal morass. In some European countries this condition has been used precisely to ban certain forms of speech which - given their context - were relatively harmless. As I've pointed out earlier the very presence of laws and sentiments that seek to control speech have a tendency to create the obscene phenomenon of self-censorship. Buruma has an excellent example:

It is easy to go too far, however. If we censor anything that might cause offense, we undermine our right to free speech. In a recent production of "The Magic Flute" in New York, the English translation of the libretto, which was sung in German, left out all disobliging references to women and to the dark skin of Monostatos, the Moor. This is a clear example of going too far. Mozart's librettist, Emanuel Schikaneder, certainly was not promoting aggression against women or black people.

As usual, do read the entire piece.

Yes, it’s a bit early to start running videos that celebrate Israel’s independence - May 14 is the exact day - but I am totally taken by Ofra Haza’s rendition of Yerushalaim Shel Zahav, which I discovered by accident on YouTube last night. Ergo, I can't wait and share it now. It’s a mesmerizing performance, regardless of whether you like Israel or not:

This video dates back to 1998 when Ofra Haza was still in the prime of her life. She died two years later at the age of forty-two of AIDS related organ failure.

Charles Krauthammer eulogizes Boris Yeltsin and makes the exact point I made earlier this week about Gorbachev:

Credit for the fall of communism usually is given to two sets of actors. On the one side, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and John Paul II, whose relentless pressure caused a hollowed-out system to collapse. On the other side, conventional mythology credits Mikhail Gorbachev.

This is quite wrong. True, Gorbachev inadvertently caused the collapse of communism. But his intention was always to save it. To the very end, Gorbachev believed in it. His mission was to reform communism in order to make it work. To do that, the Soviet system had to become more human -- i.e., more in tune with real human nature -- and thus more humane. Gorbachev's problem was that humane communism is an oxymoron.

Read the entire piece and the apt conclusion that Putin's ascendancy is a belated attempt to follow Deng's successful approach to reform China.

It may look like a far-fetched notion, but in this fascinating article from Nicholas Eberstadt and Hans Groth it becomes clear that there is indeed a silver lining to Europe's demographic problems:

Another economic benefit of healthy aging is that longer and healthier lifespans mean more vigorous senior citizens. The payoff would come not from putting great-grandparents to work but mainly from greater productive activity among people in their 50s and 60s. The generation of western Europeans currently 50 to 74 years old is more physically robust, and better educated and trained, than any before in that age group in the continent's history. The health and education of similarly aged cohorts in the future can be expected to increase further over the next quarter century--even as ordinary working conditions in Western Europe's knowledge-based and service-driven economy continue to become less arduous. All of this could make for an upsurge in economic activity among older western Europeans.

I have long argued that it is ridiculous to forcibly retire perfectly healthy and productive citizens only because they have reached the arbitrary mark of '60' or '65'. That in particular is an issue when the cost of that is passed on to society at large. Some nations are catching on to this, the Germans for instance have bravely set the first steps on the road to retirement age reform a little while ago. The benefits would translate into such tangibles as increased purchasing power and enlarging the scope for savings which in turn would benefit investment and growth. As obvious as the fix is, the harder it will be to implement as it requires a significant change in social and cultural attitudes, note where Europeans stand today:

Yet, over the last generation, western Europeans have translated all of their increased life expectancy--and then some--into leisure time. As life expectancy has risen steadily, the average age of retirement has fallen.

[ ... ]

Contrast these developments with patterns in other affluent OECD societies. Although in the United States, Japan, and South Korea labor-force participation at older ages has also declined as prosperity has increased, a major gap now separates these countries from prosperous western European ones.

The nature of European retirement will therefore have to change for the old continent to maintain its living standards or allow them to keep growing at roughly the same pace as North America and emerging economies. The beauty of it all is that these changes should be within reach even when we take into account that uniquely European obsession with leisure. Wealth can be built at a far earlier age allowing not so much the option to eventually retire, but the flexibility to work part-time later in life. Or better still, pursue career interests that are less driven by the need to pay the bills but by finding work that addresses self-fulfillment while matching the needs for “downtime” that come with advanced age.

I for one can not see myself retire fully, but I do look forward to shifting around some of my current activities so that they match my interests better. If I can continue to get paid for that, all the better. Sure, there will always be a mandatory component to setting retirement terms, but we should be able to move away from today’s often expensive and highly arbitrary model to something which actually generates wealth for a society. Europe, take note.

I’ve always been quite generous in my support for Ayaan Hirsi Ali and there is no need to recalibrate that at all. Still, I do think we need to look a bit more critically at how her actions go down in what should be her core constituency. In The Netherlands more than a few Muslim women were in fact quite relieved to see her depart according to this article which focuses once more on Hirsi Ali’s polarizing actions. Maybe Myrtus has some time to comment on this?

UPDATE: Myrtus responds here and here . Let's just say that as a woman with a similar Muslim background and who has made a similar journey she isn't all that impressed with Hirsi Ali's approach. This quote is both clever and intriguing:

One thing that bugs me about Ayaan Hirsi Ali is that she's so anti-male. When it comes to men, you will rarely hear her give credit where it's due or say anything good about men in general, let alone her own father, who seems to have passed on to her those special genes for constantly being on the run leaving a trail of havoc in the political scene wherever he goes.

I do not know how many dinner parties or other social events I have had to sit through - biting my tongue - where the latest on global warming or ‘war on terror’ conspiracy theories were served up as absolute and undeniable truths. Maybe I should just be myself and like Andrew Klavan take the risk of losing a few friends. He’s explained it all in your must-read this week, The Big White Lie and also manages to produce the absolute gem of the month:

With its tortuous attempts to rename unpleasant facts out of existence—he’s not crippled, dear, he’s handicapped; it’s not a slum, it’s an inner city; it’s not surrender, it’s redeployment—leftism has outlived its own failure by hiding itself within the most labyrinthine construct of social delicacy since Victoria was queen.

Read the entire thing and consider your relationship with what you consider to be ‘truth’.

I have no particular feelings over Boris Yeltsin's death, but do rememember with fondness and excitement that late summer of 1991 when he stood atop a tank to defy the last attempt to preserve hardline Communist rule. For that, and for his generous treatment of the early stage investors in the new Russia he has definitely deserved his spot in history. It is odd though to note how much of the blame he gets for the chaos that ensued and which has now set the stage for another round of corrupt dictators occupying the Kremlin. Despite the neverending stream of hagiographies about the king of perestroika, very little has so far been said about Michail Gorbachev's conspicuous role in the descent and chaos of what once was a world power.

A good round-up with some great photos from the Yeltsin years can be found here.

RANDOM RECOLLECTION: In Hong Kong in the 1990s there was a fairly popular bar named after the man, Yelt's Inn. Not sure if it still exists.

The largest Dutch bank, ABN-Amro has been snapped up by my first employer, Barclays in a fairly spectacular deal that so far appears to have outwitted another group of suitors:

ABN Amro agreed today to be acquired by Barclays for 67 billion euros, or $91 billion, creating one of the world’s largest banks in a carefully crafted deal that reduces — but does not eliminate — the chances of another suitor coming in with a higher bid to buy and break up the bank.

In a surprise facet of the deal, ABN Amro, the largest Dutch bank, said that it had arranged to sell LaSalle Bank, its attractive American business, to Bank of America for $21 billion in cash. LaSalle is the corporate gem that had drawn Royal Bank of Scotland, the British bank that teamed up with two other European banks, to mount a counter bid for ABN Amro.

It's a good deal for shareholders and from that point I regret having dumped my ABN-Amro stock a few years too early, but that is not really all that big a deal. Much more important is having made an early career call after sitting through the now infamous UBS/SBC merger in 1998/99. There will be an awful lot of bankers walking the streets of London and Amsterdam trying to re-invent themselves, not always the easiest of tasks. And this deal will probably trigger a wave of further consolidation in a sector that will continue to rationalize and spit out valuable financial and entrepreneurial talent.

As expected. Live reports and commentary here.

Based on the numbers, Royal's task to beat Sarkozy in the final round will be quite daunting.

The Times has the numbers:

Five hundred Britons are leaving the UK every day to live in the sun or find work abroad, according to the Office of National Statistics. A record 380,000 people left the country in 2005. More than half were British citizens leaving for more than a year. The top destinations are Australia, Spain, France and New Zealand.

It's an interesting article that also has some comprehensive numbers about who is replacing all these emigrants. There is no clear geographical pattern here, with the largest influx into the UK coming from India, Poland and Australia. I think we can only establish some real trends once more data over a period of time are gathered. What is clear though is that people are on the move and that will translate into signficant social and cultural change.

UPDATE: More here.

FrontPage Magazine's Jamie Glazov talks to Ian Buruma about the Dutch, multiculturalism and Islam. They are not exactly on the same page which actually makes it a very interesting interview.

It has been quite a while since I wrote about Hong Kong, but earlier this week I attended a luncheon organized by the venerable free-market Fraser Institute and the keynote speaker was Anson Chan. Chan as you may recall is the former Chief Secretary of Hong Kong – essentially the number two position in the city state’s government – a role she held under both British and Chinese rule until she was forced out in 2001. She has at times been described as Hong Kong’s ‘iron lady’, but it would be far more fitting to label her as the only Hong Kong politician with a large popular appeal and the only establishment figure to act as a forceful voice for universal suffrage in Hong Kong. Her appearance at one of the largest pro-democracy demonstrations a few years ago has turned her into an icon of the Chinese quest for democracy.

Of course, her immense popularity in Hong Kong is precisely what prompted her early retirement and which has kept her out of a formal role ever since. Yet, bitterness is not part of her message and during her speech she debunked some of the most commonly held misconceptions about the former crown colony. Ever since the handover – now almost 10 years ago – the main issues that have faced Hong Kong have primarily been economic, the fall-out from the Asian currency crisis was a crucial one. But also, and Chan failed to mention this, the fact that as China grows it is becoming less reliant on Hong Kong as a port of entry to the mainland and that has taken some of the gloss off the endless row of office towers lining Victoria Harbour. Still, Hong Kong remains the freest economy in the world where the ideal of low taxes, little regulation and the rule of law have remained an incredible force for growth and success.

More importantly, Chan argued that Beijing so far has been fairly benign and fears over the PLA marching down the city’s streets were largely unfounded. Beijing has stuck to most of its commitments under the “one country, two systems deal” with Britain. The one area however where it has dragged its feet is following the route - as laid out in Hong Kong’s Basic Law - to universal suffrage and Chan rightly focused on her concerns about some of the watered down initiatives coming from current Hong Kong leader Donald Tsang, clearly designed to receive the nod from Beijing. Together with her supporters she has now laid out a timetable for full democracy that is far more aggressive than what is currently being prepared.

Two things were noteworthy. When asked if Beijing had pressured her in the past she emphatically said ‘no’ pointing out in a graceful way that she wasn’t exactly known to bow to pressure. But, said Chan, we should never forget that the current Chinese leadership is hardly a monolith speaking with one voice; there are opposing factions within the leadership. And we should not underestimate the sizeable contingent in the Chinese capital that does realize that continued economic growth and Chinese strength can only be sustained through eventual democratic development.

As you know, I am very skeptical about the global warming hysteria, but if you spend a few years in Hong Kong it is enough to turn you into a surefire Greenpeace contributor. When I left Hong Kong in 1999 there were already deep concerns over the city’s environment and its impact on international firms that were increasingly reluctant to send staff to a place where the quality of life was simply appalling. It was also a local question and precisely one that touched on direct democracy as Hong Kong’s citizenry was never allowed to give any input on how the city’s pro-business elite basically relegated a clean and healthy living environment to the bottom of the list of priorities. The issue was ignored and Chan to some extent bears some of the responsibility for that. When asked about this Chan’s answer could have had a 1999 timestamp, nothing has changed in terms of pro-active environmental policies, things have actually turned worse as the unfettered urban and industrial sprawl continues unabated into mainland China, often supported by Hong Kong capital.

The basic train of thought has always been that democratic change in Hong Kong would eventually help foster freedom in mainland China. Capitalism and eco-destruction have proven how profound and successful the influence from the former British enclave has been to date. Democracy may be a tougher export product, but it surely has potential for Hong Kong and its motherland.

Anson Chan is one of the few Asian politicians who knows how wealth creation has created an emerging class of engaged citizens that demands to have a say as to how they want to enjoy the fruits of their labor. She ended the meeting by underlining the importance of staying true to your values, and Hong Kong as a fiercely proud beacon of freedom will no doubt follow the deep convictions of its lone political heroine.

A survey on national freedom and security conducted by the National Committee 4 and 5 May (referring to the dates the Dutch remember the death and celebrate the end of Nazi occupation respectively) has revealed what many have speculated about for a while. The Dutch feel that their much vaunted freedom is under pressure:

Freedom is seen as an important value to Dutch democracy. Residents value the freedom of speech particularly highly, the survey showed.

Respondents felt this freedom was certainly under pressure: almost 40 percent said that you cannot always freely express your opinion, especially in the debate on the multicultural society, respondents said.

"Evidently this debate has become so polarised that people feel they cannot always say what they like," the report reads.

And this reflects individuals responding, more crucially it would be interesting to see the numbers - much harder to get no doubt - that inidicate to what extent self-censorship has permeated the media.

Quite revealing and also highly indicative of the overall mood is the fact that the survey reports that the Dutch would be quite willing to trade freedom for security. And how can we interpret this finding? Give the government blanket authority to fight terror, no matter what the cost? Or is this evidence of an omnipresent willingness to stay quiet in order to preserve the peace? Whatever the answer, it says an awful lot of how much importance the Dutch really attach to their freedom. In my mind, it is under pressure from more sides than just one.

"But I’m not sure that they want to join the real world. Most of the old political crowd—they know nothing about globalization, about the economy. Not even the businessmen do. They are political, but they are not tied to politics. If they want the illusion of their nice French shelter, Sarkozy will lose.”

According to Christine Ockrent, France's top TV-journalist in a lenghthy and excellent essay about the French elections from the hand of Jane Kramer. Once you've read it you may want to reconsider putting your money on a Sarko win. The wishes of the pro-market Anglo-Saxon commentariat are miles away from the deep French attachment to the status quo. But as Ockrent correctly argues, no one is sure at this point, the float is simply too large to make any sensible prediction.

Der Spiegel rounds up press commentary from the other side of the pond (via TMV).

And David Frum takes on some of these predictable assessments in the Daily Telegraph by arguing that No policy can outwit the Grim Reaper. I fear he's right.

Hitchens finds it in France and explains:

And that reason, uncomfortable as it may be, is that most of the Communist electorate defected straight to the National Front.

To which I would add they they are equally happy to turn back to the left if the right fails to deliver on the grievances of the former 'Communists'. That is what I would term the Dutch lesson: dissatisfied voters looking for a new and decisive direction, irrespective of ideology. And yes, that is the hallmark of uncertainty:

Add to this the rather peculiar fact that a huge tranche of voters—most recently as large as 40 percent—simply refuse to tell the opinion polls (who last time got everything calamitously wrong) how they intend to cast their ballots. Again, the best intuitive explanation of this reticence is that many people are embarrassed to declare a Le Pen allegiance in advance.

Not sure if Hitchens is correct here as it would seem that a high level of uncertainty is an increasing characteristic of voting trends in Western Europe. And, the number of 40% that is apparently undecided again is in sync with Dutch trends where a similarly large floating vote was measured shortly before election day.

UPDATE: And like the Dutch, the French are increasingly likely to pack up and go:

According to a 2005 TNS Sofres poll, 2.2 million French people live in foreign countries — mainly in Europe. Half of those leaving are under the age of 35 years old, believing they will have more chance in other countries. Those departing, and above 35 years old, either say they are leaving for tax reasons or either for professionnal reasons. Even more striking; more than 90% of emigrants are pleased with their new life-styles, and 40% are planning on either never come back to live in France, or come back once they retire.

Interesting parallel.

As everyone is weighing in on this, I sort of feel compelled to give my take on this whole affair. While grieving for the dead and their families and friends, I think it is important to try and curb overreactions and mass hysteria and Jesse Walker’s post about the shooting’s aftermath at Reason is a very good starting point.

To be frank, we should avoid a counterproductive discussion about guns as it has the potential to lead to policies and measures that will simply not address the core of the problem. And that is, I think, the propensity of societies to create such deep feelings of alienation and resentment that from time to time it produces unguided monsters like Cho Seung-hui. And this is by no means just a western or capitalist phenomenon, communist or authoritarian regimes have also had their share of mass murderers, although I have no firm numbers to suggest they appear in equal numbers across the globe.

Wherever such resentment and anger translates into violence, there will be tools available, I can think of quite a number of ways to massacre innocents in a society without guns. So while there is no solution, the keys to avoiding these disasters are proper safety measures – and the jury is out on how this was all handled by Virginia Tech – and developing ways in which we can spot and prevent disturbed loners from acting out their violent fantasies. The latter will be difficult too and a witch hunt for potentially dangerous loners or sociopaths will be prove to be just as elusive a goal as outlawing guns, but at the very least it will give us some alternate tools in preventing the carnage we witnessed yesterday.

UPDATE: Ed Morrissey's post here indicates that Cho had been on the radar screen as a potential candidate for counseling and that that very knowledge should at the very least have prompted a different repsonse from Virginia Tech authorities. So it comes down to proper information sharing - once more.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Read this post by Ross Douthat too.

Made by the Economist. Key excerpt:

Which leaves Mr Sarkozy as the best of the bunch. Unlike the others, and despite his long service as a minister under Mr Chirac, he makes no bones of admitting that France needs radical change. He is an outsider, born to an aristocratic Hungarian émigré father; he openly admires America; he is enthusiastic about the economic renaissance of Britain. He plans an early legislative blitz to take on hitherto untouchable issues such as labour-market liberalisation, cutting corporate and income taxes and trimming public-sector pensions.

So, it is not a 'EU Constitution Lite' from the hands of Merkel with input from Sarkozy, but a revised treaty that would obviate the need for a constitution altogether. The pragmatic Dutch have teamed up with the man in a rush to cementing his legacy:

The European Union should ditch plans for a constitution, Prime Minister Tony Blair has said.

Instead, reforms to make the expanded Europe of 27 nations more effective should be included in a conventional treaty, of the kind that has been seen many times in the Union's 50-year history.
Speaking at 10 Downing Street, following talks with Dutch prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende, Mr Blair gave his backing to a Dutch proposal for an "amending treaty".

Mr Balkenende said the change might free some EU governments from the commitment they have made to hold referendums on the constitutional treaty, which was given a resounding thumbs-down by voters in France and the Netherlands in 2005.

But Mr Blair insisted that it was not simply a question of removing the word "constitution" from the document's title. An amending treaty should contain only those elements needed to make the EU work better and not measures which led to fears of a Brussels-run superstate. "It is important we go back to the idea of a conventional treaty where the idea is to make Europe more effective, work more effectively, because we now have a Europe of 27 countries rather than 15," said Mr Blair.

This is a positive development as it recognizes that the EU is essentially an alliance of independent nation states that seek to achieve efficiencies, not create bureaucracies.

In the wake of my column on Dutch emigration some suggested that it could be a unique case, not necessarily applicable to other European nations. Well, Iain Murray picks up on a very similar trend, in Britain.

UPDATE: And French emigration too:

The simple fact is that, in the past few years, young people have been leaving France in unprecedented numbers. More worrying still is that although depopulation was a worry in the French countryside in the Sixties, it now has become a specifically urban phenomenon. Nor is it confined to Paris: Lyon, Lille, Bordeaux and Marseille can all report an exodus of young people towards les pays Anglo-Saxons (the United States and the UK). This fact was acknowledged by politician Nicolas Sarkozy when he made his flying visit to London last month to visit the French community there - at 400,000 people this is (as the newspaper Le Parisien helpfully pointed out) equivalent to one of the largest French cities.

The omnipresent CCTV cameras. Tessa Mayes chronicles the latest, startling developments.

Some of you will recall my exasperation over Canada opting out of a North American Missile Defense Shield, an unfortunate move that even under the current conservative leadership of Stephen Harper has not been re-addressed.

The focus of missiles directed at western urban centers has now shifted back to Europe which arguably is within range of missiles launched from Iran. Anti-American sentiments, a firm belief in negotiation table stability as well as resenting any form of defense that could be construed as 'offense' are all contributing to European inaction. And if there is any attempt to become pro-active on this issue it is coming from the New Europe. Robert Haddick - aka Westhawk - has written an instructive column on the latest missile adventures in Europe.

So we have entered the phase of the long goodbye as we are still left guessing when the actual retirement date will be. As a result expect a flood of Tony Blair content over the next few months, here for instance are Blair’s ten defining moments.

My take on Blair has always been mixed. His firm stance on joining America in going to war in Iraq remains commendable and it was very clear evidence of how he had been able to reform Labour. From an unelectable far-left outfit indebted to union interests it has now become a modern center-left party that has been very successful in accessing the middle class vote. Yet at the same time I have always felt uncomfortable with the endless spin and Clinton-style power games that often appeared to have precedence over genuine and fundamentally sound policies.

Blair’s place in history is more than secured and his failure to satisfy the obsessive need to match Margaret Thatcher’s term in office will not affect that. The deeper question though will be how the Blair-Brown feuding will impact on Labour’s near term cohesiveness and strength to win the next election.

Further to the plans to make ‘happiness’ an integral part of public policy, Darrin McMahon (via Paul Kedrosky) at Cato takes a closer look at this hard to grasp concept and its historical roots:

Thus, one of the most striking developments in Western societies over the last several hundred years is the steady expansion of the hope and expectation of happiness in this life. Concomitant with this expansion has been the steady erosion of other ways of conceiving of life’s purpose and end. If other ways of doing so have not been entirely abandoned — there are those who still live for virtue, honor, one’s homeland, or family name — in a world that places a premium on good feeling and positive emotion, these other ends have nowhere near the power to channel and constrain our choices that they once did.

One of my concerns always has been that - especially in the European context – the idea of being happy is turned into a basic right and that the failure of public channels to provide it constitutes a justifiable grievance. It has also spawned a culture of hedonism or self-indulgence that is making it increasingly impossible for many to truly appreciate the sacrifices one needs to make to attain a certain state of happiness. That conclusion brings us right back to the basic difference between ‘happiness’ and the ‘pursuit of happiness’. It is startling to note that in Europe some are considering to incorporate ‘happiness’ into the same box of health, environment & welfare and thus putting an inordinate burden on governments to deliver on it.

And yes, this once more underlines one of the fundamental differences between Americans and Europeans. It stands to be reasoned however that as societies get wealthier and less effort is required to become happy, feelings of unhappiness can increase exponentionally. The proliferation of shrinks I dare say is an American phenomenon. Here is McMahon again:

On one level, then, we worry about happiness today with such single-minded focus because we can: Inhabitants of the world’s developed nations are the most fortunate creatures to have walked the face of the earth. And yet for all our focus on happiness it is by no means clear that we are happier as a result. Might we not even say that our contemporary concern is something of an inauspicious sign, belying a deep anxiety and doubt about the object of our pursuit? Does the fact that we worry so much about being happy suggest that we are not?

McMahon goes on to argue that individuals are far better positioned to find their state of happiness rather than the state delivering it to them.

For myself I still haven’t figured out what constitutes happiness, which to some extent also explains my global quest to discover it. Happiness probably falls apart in three key categories: where you are, what you do and who is accompanying you during the journey. I have nailed down the last part and am beginning to get a firmer grip on the 'what you do' part, but my deepest feelings of unhappiness are most often triggered by, “Why am I not living in New York?” or “Did I abandon Asia to soon?” or better still, “What if I returned to Europe?”. Of course these questions reflect precisely what McMahon says: the relative ease with which such goals can be realized these days contribute directly to our feelings of unhappiness.

This probably will be a recurring Peaktalk item, almost worthy of a new category.

The French Presidential election campaign got underway today with the first vote scheduled for April 22, and a run-off between the top two of round one on May 6. Michael Stickings has a good primer.

I have not been paying an awful lot of attention to this so I consulted with one of my French friends over the weekend. While not being able to give me some tangible guidance he pointed out that he had a hard time seeing Ségolène Royal making it to the Élysée. The reason? "She doesn't like people" and that confirmed my suspicion that the Socialist Party's candidate is too frosty and career-driven to connect with the French electorate. Sarkozy is far better positioned to capitalize on populist sentiments that currently exist across the political spectrum. For now my money is on a Sarkozy-Royal final, with the former the clear favorite to win.

To my chat with Fausta Wertz on Blog Talk Radio which starts in about ten minutes, here.

UDATE: Always fun to do these radio chats. What is important to highlight is the context in which certain things happen and sometimes that gets lost in radio conversations, purely because of a lack of time. Here are a few comments that I wanted to add:

It is important to understand that failed Muslim integration to a large extent has resulted from the long held belief that allowing different religious pillars to exist in The Netherlands would contribute to a solution like it had in the past for the Catholic-Protestant divide on which the nation was built. The problem is that a template for neutralizing religious tensions between a culturally and economically largely homogenous group has limited use to integrate a group that both ethnically and economically occupies a different and separate world. Add to that the fact that Catholic and Protestant structures have largely become defunct in one of Europe’s most secular nations and you can picture the divergent tracks in Dutch society.

Secondly, following on caller Siggy’s questions – check out his blog here – the EU has gone through very different stages. From an economic project to a political “counterweight to the US” effort and now that its sheer size makes it impossible to foster a single European identity, a rather uncertain future. Again, the years of a Franco-German axis setting a largely political agenda appear to have waned, but it is not unthinkable that a possible Merkel-Sarkozy alliance could breathe new life into it. They could however shift the attention towards more economic reform and growth, but that is hopeful speculation on my part.

Dutch emigration numbers are released by the Dutch Central Bureau of Statistics and require close examination. I will continue to follow these and interpret them and while they may not be as dramatic as you break them down, the trend of increasing emigration stands.

Also, as some of my readers have no doubt noticed I am increasingly annoyed at the hyperventilating over the notion that ‘Muslims are taking over Europe’. Yes, immigrants from Muslim nations will make up an increasing and significant portion of Western Europe’s population, but so will Eastern Europeans and other immigrant groups. Many measures are being taken at different levels to curb or streamline immigration. At the same time early evidence indicates that immigrant birth rates are trending towards those of native Europeans. The reason for the latter is economics: it requires two spouses working to maintain a decent lifestyle in urban Western Europe and that will impact on the number of offspring one has.

In short, we are witnessing fundamental social and economic change in Europe the outcome of which remains highly uncertain. In my chat I alluded to a decade of uncertainty and it seems that old Europe is not terribly adroit in adapting to the rapid sequence of events that is changing their continent. The ‘passive contentedness’ of both citizens and political elites do not really help here.

Also, remember that we haven’t even talked about the competitive economic pressures from outside Europe and the graying of the native population combined with the sustainability of the welfare state. The Dutch case above all is so interesting because they have as I pointed out in my original column all of the social, demographic and economic challenges compressed into one small nation. Consequently they have become a sort of laboratory for the new and changed Europe of tomorrow. Nations that are on a similar track are Britain, Germany, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria and most of the Nordic countries.

Related Posts
The Church and the Nation – Background on how 'pillarization' helped to build the Dutch nation and mitigate religious tensions in the past.

The Pragmatic Revolution – Explaining that the Dutch are not tolerant or overly liberal by nature as is often suggested, but rather pragmatic and sometimes indifferent people as a result of the cards geography and history have dealt them.

Here's an interesting videoblog that chronicles the life of a group of young adults trying to lead a normal life in a city where that is increasingly impossible: Hometown Baghdad.

Here's a good photo.

And this time it was Nancy Pelosi who made headlines because of it. Of course, many failed to understand the context in which the Speaker of the House donned the scarf, but some have taken the time to explain it. The Cunning Realist and Garance Franke-Ruta provide much needed clarity and background.

Next Monday I will be Fausta Wertz's guest on Blog Talk Radio, April 9 at noon EST, 9:00 AM PST. The plan is to talk about my latest column, Europe and related issues. You can call in with questions too.

Fausta's blog is here.

A number of readers sent me a link to Johann Hari's piece Islam in the West in Dissent, which I discussed earlier here. Still it is worthwhile to revisit this article.

In it Hari highlights the schism between the two camps that are framing the debate about Islam and in particular, Islam in Europe. On the one hand there is what Hari calls the "Clash of Civilizations" crowd and on the other the group that doesn't necessarily dispels the basic claims of the 'Clash Crowd', but one that strongly believes in a moderate Muslim strain that can help bring about fundamental change to the troubled religion.

This assessment is largely correct and an excellent and recent example of this division can be found in that well-known laboratory for Western-Muslim relations, The Netherlands. Take a look at this interesting piece of news, Hirsi Ali's ally attacked by fellow Islam critics. The basic argument is that emerging "Clash of Civilization" style politicans have rebranded the original debate about the conflicting Western and Muslim values into a hard and uncompromising political agenda:

Early this month, columnist Afshin Ellian dealt the first blow: Mr Wilders, Afshin Ellian wrote in his column in the NRC Handelsblad newspaper of 3 March, is radicalising and rapidly developing into an extreme right-wing politician.

Notably, Afshin Ellian backed his criticism with a reference to former conservative VVD politician Frits Bolkestein who, in the early 1990s, opened the attack on Islam but has been saying for some time now that people like Geert Wilders have taken things too far. Others, including author Leon de Winter, philosopher Bart Jan Spruijt and Labour ideologist Paul Scheffer have made similar comments.

It is an interesting observation and it is correct. Perfectly well reasoned criticism of fundamentalism has in many cases mutated into a sort of hateful bile that no longer offers solutions, but only bitter confrontation. Enter one of The Netherlands most respected academics, Professor Van Doorn - whose 'Organizational Sociology' class I attended in the 80s - with the following comment:

According to Professor Van Doorn, commentators like Afshin Ellian and Sylvain Ephimenco have for years been 'prompting' Geert Wilders. He is their disciple. But now that Geert Wilders is putting their words into action, they are taking fright and turning their backs on him. However, Professor Van Doorn argues it is now too late to pull back: "The aforementioned commentators would do better to ask themselves whether they are not complicit in Geert Wilders' crusade."

Even left-wing magazine De Groene Amsterdammer has devoted a sarcastic commentary to the 'change of heart' on the part of the Dutch Islam critics. The item's author, Hubert Smeets, says that Ayaan Hirsi Ali and her friends appreciated the outspokenness of the late populist politician Pim Fortuyn who was killed in 2002.

But Geert Wilders actually puts his money where his mouth is, and that's giving The Friends of Ayaan Hirsi Ali a bad case of cold feet.

Not necessarily so and it has always been a trademark for the leftish establishment to equate the pioneers in the debate - Ellian, Fortuyn, Hirsi Ali, Van Gogh etc. - with some of history's less palatable characters. And that is a very flawed approach as all of them in essence were and are free-thinkers whose quest for openness and debate unfortunately enabled real hate-mongers and closeted fascists to emerge. Not that Wilders is one, but his rhetoric has reached a level at which it has become difficult to consider him a credible and reasonable voice in this debate.

Exactly the same phenomenon has surfaced in the right-of-center blogosphere where previously well-written or original blogs have descended into being repetitive cesspools of Islamophobia. Not good. Fortuyn, Van Gogh, Ellian and Hirsi Ali initiated a debate in order to ensure that viable criticism of Islam and its radical offshoots could finally enter the mainstream, not for it to become a radical and divisive ideology on the fringe. I suspect that the parting of ways within this group has only just started, to the detriment of the issue that all were once so vigorously debating together.

UPDATE: Here is another voice weighing in on the debate:

Fortunately because I have lived and worked in a more cosmopolitan world than most of America, my views of Islam and its followers has been quite different from what is being advertised by many non-Muslim voices with political agendas running past their ability to reason or engage in reasoned discussions. Radio talk show hosts come to mind, although print and cyber sources are just as polluted by ignorant, broad-brush rants as their big-mouthed broadcast brethren.

Read the entire post here.

As opposed to “Give me your tired, your poor” many jurisdictions in the new world have discovered that the disgruntled Dutch are anything but tired and poor. They’re young, affluent, well-educated, entrepreneurial, fluent in English and smart enough to have figured that the time has come to get out as the future can no longer be found at home.

My latest column is up over at Pajamas Media, read the rest here.

Another gift of history that keeps on giving is the highly complex relationship between Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger. In The Kissinger Presidency historian Robert Dallek reveals how Kissinger managed to usurp presidential powers, most notably during the 1973 Yom Kippur War:

Kissinger and Haig decided to convene a meeting of national-security officials to devise a response to Brezhnev. Kissinger acknowledges in his memoirs that Nixon was by then asleep, and that he and Haig decided not to get him up. "Should I wake up the President?," Kissinger asked Haig during a 9:50 p.m. phone conversation on October 24, according to the transcript. "No," Haig answered. A half-hour later, in another phone conversation, it is Kissinger who has become reluctant. "Have you talked to the President?," Haig asked. "No, I haven't," Kissinger replied. "He would just start charging around I don't think we should bother the President." Haig persuaded Kissinger to at least shift the meeting from the State Department to the White House, as a way to leave the impression that Nixon was "a part of everything you are doing." Was Nixon on sedatives that would not allow him to function effectively? Had he been drinking? Was he simply preoccupied, as Kissinger suggests in his official recollections? For whatever reason, Kissinger did not want the president involved.

It was an extraordinary turn of events. None of the seven officials who met for more than three hours, until two a.m., had been elected to office. Yet they were setting policy in a dangerous international crisis, and coming to a decision that should have rested with the president: directing U.S. forces to raise America's worldwide level of military readiness from Defense Conditions 4 and 5 to Def Con 3, a level reached only once before, during the Cuban missile crisis.

Kissinger's determination was not only rooted in his own relentless ambition, but also in the belief that as time went on Nixon had increasingliy become incapacitated as a functioning president:

The president himself fared little better. Kissinger privately referred to Nixon as "that madman," "our drunken friend," and "the meatball mind."

Most of what Dallek reports is based on a trove of recently released information and transcripts. That of course begs the question whether such extenisve recordkeeping is still being practiced in today's White House so that we can eventually construe how policy during the Bush years came into being. Somehow I think that the lessons of Richard and Henry will ensure that it will be much harder to unwind the eventual narrative of George and Dick.

You can pre-order Dallek's new book here.

The British are facing the prospect of mandatory schooling for 16 to 18 year olds, and Fabian Tassano is leading the charge in arguing that this proposal constitutes a drastic infringement of civil liberties.

Of course, the Samizdata folks are on the case too, here and here, and their argumentation is quite compelling. And that is that on the one hand we have done everything to infantilize children or young adults by gradually absolving them from a general sense of responsibility, while at the same time giving them the tools to earn and spend money, have sex and pretty much do whatever they like as if they were adults. Now my parents always forced me to work odd jobs like delivering newspapers while being educated, and it seems to me that today's young are well, if not better, equipped to make an informed choice about work, continued education or a combination of both. The baseline for that decision should be that they have completed a basic level of high school education up to a certain age. In The Netherlands this is a mandatory arrangement for those 16 and 17 where they can combine work with some sort of education sponsored by the company or organization they work for. To my knowledge this approach has worked quite well, precisely because it gives flexibility to young workers and employers, while ensuring that some on-the-job training takes place.

To be frank, there is a significant segment of the 16 to 18 year olds that isn't really all that motivated or suitable to continue to learn and if they're forced to do so is a phenomenal waste of public resources. Not to mention the disruption they tend to cause to the more motivated crowd that prefers to stay in school until they're 18.

So, although I am not jumping up and down like Tassano, I do see how some well-intentioned but misguided social engineering, if enacted, will add a significant cost to education while possibly devaluing its overall quality. And above all what we see here is how government - in this case Britain's Labour - appropriates a piece of decisionmaking that should ultimately reside with the young adult and his or her family.

NOTE: Remember that industry leader lamenting that "a generation of 'cotton wool kids' are applying for jobs without any leadership or entrepreneurial skills" a little while ago? Remember where that was? Yep, the UK.

In Northern Ireland. Christopher Hitchens dissects the recent accord between Gerry Adams and Ian Paisley, without mercy. A must-read.

On one continent it is the individual pursuit of it, on the other an objective for public policy:

A group of economists, sociologists and policy wonks are gathering in Rome Monday to discuss these questions. It comes as happiness has blossomed into a growing field of study, with hundreds of journal articles published in the past seven years alone.

The conference will focus on whether life satisfaction can be quantified and integrated into policy. “We are, it seems, much closer to measuring how happy people are, as well as understanding more clearly other aspects of their subjective well-being,” noted the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, one of the conference's organizers, on its website.

“These advances, so some would argue, open the door to different paradigms for policy-making...which see people's happiness, rather than national income, as the goal that policy-makers seek to maximize.”

I am open to the argument that GDP is probably not the best indicator to measure overall well being, but deeply suspicious of declaring a highly subjective concept like happiness as new territory for public policy.

Richard Fernandez has some useful comments on the drawbacks of being too overt in laying out a roadmap for a diplomatic resolution. Meanwhile David Frum looks at the long record of past incidents between the West and Iran where diplomatic exchanges in the end secured some sort of - often highly unsatisfactory - resolution.

I've been quite busy and would have liked to spend more time on this affair last week, but just haven't had the time. May be this week. Stay tuned.

In the meantime consider Niall Ferguson's take.

And how we cope.