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.

Well, not exactly, but David Frum has found the time to review Mark Steyn’s book and the result is worth your time for Frum gets it exactly right: Steyn has delivered a wake-up call rather than an obituary for a lost continent. Frum very clearly understands the book’s basic flaw:

Demographic trends have a surprising way of reversing themselves with amazing rapidity. Nobody foresaw the baby boom in 1938. And yet only eight years later, birth rates surged all through the developed world, in devastated Germany and Japan as well as in victorious Britain and America. OK, there was a big war in between. But s late as 1966, most forecasters thought the baby boom would continue indefinitely. (That's one reason that Lyndon Johnson was able to persuade the Senate that Medicare could be easily financed.) Six years later, birth rates were plunging.

I for one would not bet the mortgage money that Europe's low birth rates of today will continue for very much longer. Nor would I place much confidence in the continuance of high birth rates among European immigrant populations.

As I’ve pointed out before, there are indeed some trends reported in Europe that give credibility to this claim and in turn they embed some hope in Steyn’s gloomy message.

While we are at it, Johann Hari came up with a similar analysis a few weeks ago, but went one step further in criticizing Steyn:

When the figures fail him, Steyn falls back on urban mythology. After the 9/11 massacres, in his Daily Telegraph column he repeated as fact preposterous claims that Muslim children all over New York had warned their favourite teachers not to go to the World Trade Centre that day. Here, he says, "On the night of September 11th Muslim youths in northern England rampaged through the streets cheering Islam's glorious victory over the Great Satan. They pounded on the hoods of the cars, hammered the doors and demanded the drivers join them in the chants of 'Osama Bin Laden is a great man.'" There is no record of these events on Lexis-Nexis; Steyn has not replied to a request for the source. He says variously that "the old flag" of St George is now "unflyable" in England, and - with shades of Enoch Powell's untraceable "grinning picanninies" - claims he knows "an English lady" who wears a headscarf every time she steps outside to stop Muslims harrassing her. As somebody who lives in a Muslim area, everybody I know who lives here finds this preposterous. But this is Steyn's way with evidence: the extremely atypical is presented as universal, and the urban myth is presented as damning fact.

The anecdotal nature of the book is of course an easy target for Steyn’s critics and to some extent it has always surprised me that the book was not properly footnoted and did not include some numbers to support its basic theories. That brings us back to the assessment that America Alone more than anything is a pamphlet designed to spark debate and hopefully raise an awareness that will help avoid the dark scenario it paints. And Steyn has done that with inimitable verve:

“Statist Europe signed on to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s alleged African proverb – “it takes a village to raise a child” – only to discover they got it backward: on the Continent, the lack of children will raze the village”

Talking about multiculturalism and some of its consequences, here is a TV-interview with Munira mirza one of the authors of the hotly debated report ‘Living Apart Together: British Muslims and the paradox of multiculturalism’. Note the last part where the interviewer tries to steer Mirza towards the 'Clash of Civilizations' theory. In response, she makes it very clear that conflicts and confusion within the West as well as ruptures within the Muslim world are the key dynamics that are currently fueling radicalization and jihadist sentiments.

Henryk Broder, one of the few non-Anglo-Saxon writers to focus on Europe's dark future has written a book called "Hurra, Wir Kapitulieren!" ("Hurray! We're Capitulating"). Judging from the excerpts there are probably few new insights offered by Broder, but the German setting gives us some fairly unique anecdotes. This in particular struck me as, well, instructive:

Oskar Lafontaine, a one-time chairman of the Social Democratic Party and German chancellor candidate, sees "commonalities between leftist policies and the Islamic religion." In an interview with Neues Deutschland, he says: "Islam depends on community, which places it in opposition to extreme individualism, which threatens to fail in the West. The second similarity is that the devout Muslim is required to share his wealth with others. The leftist also wants to see the strong help the weak. Finally, the prohibition of interest still plays a role in Islam, much as it once did in Christianity. At a time when entire economies are plunging into crisis because their expectations of returns on investment have become totally absurd, there is a basis for a dialogue to be conducted between the left and the Islamic world."

Lafontaine called upon the West to exercise self-criticism ("We must constantly ask ourselves through which eyes the Muslims see us") and expressed sympathy for the "indignation" of Muslims. According to Lafontaine, "people in Muslim countries have experienced many indignities, one of the most recent being the Iraq war. What we are seeing here is resource imperialism."

Lafontaine's theory of "commonalities" is a very good example of how Europe's future might unfold and I find it a more realistic scenario than the demographic takeover Steyn pictures. At the same time it is equally scary, maybe even scarier if you contemplate that it is Europe’s progressive camp that is now more than willing to subordinate freedom and western values in order to fish in a pond of huge electoral potential.

Some may consider Lafontaine to be on the fringe, but his Linkspartei (‘Left Party’) did extremely well in the last German federal election. As the traditional Social-Democrats are increasingly moving to the center as Merkel’s coalition partners, there is room on the left and Lafontaine’s party will no doubt move into this fresh and attractive space. That by the way is not dissimilar to the Dutch situation where Labour was pounded in the recent election, forced to join a coalition with the Christian-Democrats and the Socialist Party is cleverly picking up the traditional left and new-left voters. They too will have discovered the benefits of finding ‘commonalities’.

Some constructive criticism for Mark Steyn's America Alone, from Christopher Hitchens in City Journal. No excerpts, read the whole thing.

This year was - without a doubt - the year of the books about Europe and Islam. Berlinski, Bawer, Buruma, Phillips, they have all become must-reads in order to get a better understanding of what ails the old continent. Mary Eberstadt of the Hoover Institution has brought these writers together to illustrate how their common topic is now channelling the west's penchant for scapegoating America. Eberstadt argues that:

In sum, given the information now assembling about just what is going on in Europe, about how accomodationist European politicians already are, and about how much more they are being called upon to do to appease restive Muslims both Islamist and otherwise, a new, unorthodox answer to the puzzle of anti-Americanism suggests itself. Perhaps these days, on the Continent, the widespread, all-explaining urge to lay everything at the door of the U.S. has little to do with America proper. Perhaps it does not have much to do either with the post-Cold War unipolar world. Perhaps it is not even really about Iraq.

No, perhaps the anti-Americanism of today is best understood instead as a way of being furious in public with somebody for the insecurities and anxieties wrought by Islamist terrorism in this world, including in increasingly Muslim Europe -- an option made even more attractive by the safe bet that Americans, unlike some other people, are unlikely to respond to this rhetoric, let alone to editorial cartoons, by burning cars, slitting throats, or issuing death threats in places like Paris and Amsterdam and Regensburg and London.

It is a bit of a roundabout way to explain anti-Americanism i think, but the piece has so many worthwhile passages that I would still recommend it. Especially since it also looks at the US and how the West in general in characterized by "the refusal to acknowledge painful realities, thoughts, or feelings".

It may get lost among all the media excitement over the Baker-Hamilton report, but it seems to me that another fruitful area for writing reports has emerged in Afghanistan. And I use the plural deliberately as one such report can look at the future of the nation and the West’s strategy towards fixing it, the other one can deal with the failure of NATO countries to share the burden of an increasing workload. Or better, the burden of combat:

Britain's Foreign Office minister says reluctant NATO allies need to “get real” about the threat posed by a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan.

Kim Howells told a diplomatic audience at Canada's Foreign Affairs building in Ottawa that Britons are just as frustrated as Canadians about bearing the brunt of heavy fighting in the country's south.

German, Italian, French and Spanish forces patrol relatively quiet
sectors and have refused to allow their troops to engage in combat.
At the NATO summit two weeks ago, those countries agreed to loosen restrictions and promised to help Canadian, British, Dutch and American forces battling the Taliban, but only in emergencies.

This issue has been on the frontburner especially in the UK and Canada where frustration over selective opt-outs by ‘NATO partners’ is understandably growing.

Invoking the NATO’s Article V, its collective defense clause, after 9/11 essentially created the first real combat situation for the organization. By deploying to Afghanistan most NATO governments must have known that it hardly would be a mission focused exclusively on rebuilding and maintaining peace. It was a unique venture in that the peace still had to be established before it could be maintained, but no political leader was willing to wager some political capital on that unpopular notion. This approach solidified the evidence that leaders from Canada and key European nations failed in not only recognizing and articulating the dangers of the post 9/11 world, they willfully neglected to inform their citizens of the nature of the Afghan mission.

We’re now a good five years further and while Canada is under new management and thus less ambivalent, beyond Blair’s Britain and a half-baked Dutch effort there is very limited appetite for beefing up NATO’s efforts. Berlin, Brussels, Rome, Paris and Madrid are not the best places in Europe to invoke the spirit of common defense and joint operations.

I’ve often been asked when my Euro-disparagement first emerged and in response I pinpoint the embarrassing failure of almost all European nations to end the well organized civil war and mass-murder in the former Yugoslavia. Symbolic efforts, peacekeepers and observers paved the way for an ethnic bloodbath that only the United States seemed capable of handling in the end. Kosovo was kept whole by a version of NATO that at the time had a determined nation in the driver’s seat. And by all accounts, the risk profile for the Balkans was a much easier one to digest compared to a mountainscape littered with faith based suicide bombers.

So as Washington’s hands are tied, European leaders in places like Paris and Madrid are deeply mistaken to believe that somehow Kandahar and Kabul can emerge from the rubble, in much the way that Sarajevo and Priština did. Few will understand the urgency, and even fewer will want to put precious political capital on the line to turn the Afghan mission, and NATO’s long-term future, into a success. Needless to say, the outcome of such inaction is worrisome to say the least.

Final word: while admirable we also have to see if British and Canadian efforts can endure mounting domestic criticism and political turbulence.

UPDATE: Some useful comments from Fareed Zakaria on the need to succeed in Afghanistan:

As Iraq has descended into chaos over the last three years, Washington policymakers have often pointed to Afghanistan as the success story in the war on terror. Even those who worry about the situation on the ground agree that the United States and its NATO allies have the right strategy in place; they just think we've devoted too few resources to the problem. In fact, Afghanistan is in danger of becoming a version of Iraq, where the central government has collapsed, disorder is rife and a Qaeda-backed insurgency controls large swathes of the country. In addition, the policies that the United States has in place are at best inadequate. We have tried to handle Afghanistan with an Afghan strategy. But it is now clear that the only way to stabilize the country is to have a Pakistan strategy.

As always, these solutions are multilayered.

After reading the Dutch emigration update, a reader wonders:

" ... the overarching question, however, remains unasked and therefore unanswered. Why? In my lengthy experience in the Netherlands and with the Dutch, I can honestly state that I have never met a more family-orientated culture or a more nationalistic (this is not intended to be a negative in any way) society. Families are close in The Netherlands, closer than they have probably ever been in the United States. I have seen friends suffer great distress when a family member moves beyond walking distance, a local bus ride or a short drive. There is something in the Netherlands that has revived that wanderlust in the Dutch that I had thought (until very recently) died along with Stuyvesant. I would be very interested to know what it is.

I don't think Dutch wanderlust ever died, it has been reignited. And there is not just one reason for that, although the deteriorating quality of life which encomapsses everything for immgirants to crime to environment is probably the most important one. The key accelerator is - much like the 17th century - globalization and wealth.

The Dutch economy has by necessity always been focused on trade and cross-border services. The vast growth of opportunities in an open Europe and a booming Asia - a familiar arena for the Dutch - have made overseas settlement much easier. And, as opposed to Stuyvesant's age, this is no longer the privilege of the upper class. The Dutch with their strong work ethic and broad language skills are a natural fit for the international job market. And, wealth has trickled down the classes too, buying property overseas or just taking the gamble by packing up and go is no longer that disruptive, at least from a financial perspective. The strong family ties and the generous welfare arrangments back home serve as a tangible insurance policy on which any adventurer can always fall back. I have seen many take advantage of it when the going overseas got a little too tough.

Here's an interesting podcast over at PJM by the Sanity Squad, discussing Europe and the latest from Iraq. There is quite a bit that needs to be added to the discussion I think, but for now suffice it to say that there are limits to explain the continent's future from a perspective of 'demographic dogmatism'. There is for instance also a trend reported by Dutch statistics that immigrants over time adapt to European birth rates as economic pressures force women to start working – after all we’re debating burqa bans not because Muslim women are all confined to their homes.

What I do believe is that Europeans will disengage and adapt rather than fight. Most of my family and friends are right-of-center in ideology, but they don’t hesitate to vote for parties on the left as a way of preserving the status quo. Many did so in last week’s Dutch general election. Peace and stability above all.

The Peters-model of radical ethnic cleansing is more likely in Eastern Europe where the population has a materially different economic and social history, but also less immigrants – at least at the moment – to contend with. Again, this also brings home the point to start making the clear distinction between the three tiers of Europe (Old/EU, New/Eastern and Russia) and bring in economics as one of the key drivers for social and cultural change.

The debate gets more complicated, but it is getting better too.

As we increasingly hear that demographics are determining the future of Europe and that droves are leaving the old continent, The Netherlands is always brought up in particular as an example of this phenomenon. Somehow, I’ve always felt that these statements were embellished by various commentators and thankfully the CBS (Dutch Bureau for Statistics) released a sort of interim report last month. And yes, this may indeed be the last year in quite some time to come that the Dutch are adding a net surplus to their population. And with the lowest number of babies born in twenty years, a marginal one of only 13,000 new Dutchies (on a population of 16.3 million) for the first 9 months of this year.

According to this CBS news release, emigration from The Netherlands is expected to be 130,000 for 2006, a record number and an increase of about 12% on the previous year. But half of that number is not Dutch in the first place. That group consists of Turkish immigrants returning home and refugees and asylum seekers who have not managed to obtain the status to legally reside in The Netherlands.

Even so, a large number of Dutch people are leaving and the question now is where are they off too? Well, it may be surprising but the top three of destinations is still European, and a few notable pillars of old continent decay at that. Germany, Belgium and the UK are taking in some 18,000 Dutch emigrants, with Spain and France – often equally described as futureless – taking a respectable 6th and 7th slot on the emigration destination top ten. Canada came in 5th and the USA 10th, and since they’re not listed I suspect that Australia and New Zealand probably come in somewhere in between.

There are a number of reasons for this ‘old continent popularity’. Germany and Belgium offer lower real estate prices, in Spain the weather is nicer while the job market in the UK offers a bit more excitement and earnings potential. On top of that, intra-European moves guarantee you the ability to stay close to home, a prospect that is especially interesting for the retirees who constitute some 10% of all the emigrants.

So, not exactly the massive and desperate journey across the ocean in search for a better life, but a more pragmatic approach to relocating. Still, if you net out those that stay in Europe and take account of immigrant-returnees, we see a remarkable trend to go elsewhere. And if it persists the Dutch population will start to decrease in the years to come.

Related Posts
More on the Dutch Exodus
Euro Exodus, Now The Farmers
Euro Exodus, Part II
Euro Exodus

Contrast this:

Out of the dining room and into the stores; the traditional day of feasting has turned into a day of early holiday shopping for some.

A spokeswoman for the National Retail Federation says some retailers are trying to find a way to take advantage of the fact that "once dinner is over, many families are looking for some kind of entertainment."

With this:

But while consuming mass quantities was once a big deal -- a splurge -- now we're all used to having plenty of food. Now the real splurge consists in getting everyone to take time from their busy schedules to all get together. It's a feast of no-other-priorities! I like it. I think that Thanksgiving is actually my favorite holiday, because it's all about getting the family together.

And while I am writing this Irene just quotes me a number from the newspaper which says that 36% of children below the age of six have a TV in their room. And, during last week's power outage some parents actually purchased a generator so that the kids could watch TV. Imagine that they would be forced to spend social time with the rest of their family. Or, perish the thought, creatively adapt to the situation by finding some new and alternative ways of entertainment which is what our kids did.

Yes, I know I have argued for the ability of free markets to forge great societies. But eventually we will have to pay some sort of price for offering up the family and the fun of human interaction on the altar of excessive consumerism and passive entertainment.

You know, the Dutch are going to Australia, Canada, and New Zealand and some of them, no doubt, would have liked to have gone to the U.S., but the U.S. doesn't really have a legal immigration program. So, if you need to get out in a hurry, it's no good going to the U.S. embassy.

This and many other worthwhile comments come from Mark Steyn who is interviewed over at RWN by John Hawkins. As I have noted here before, Steyn sometimes embellishes his demographic numbers in order to get his point across, so they should be taken with a grain of salt. Yet, his basic message about the bleak future for the West and for Europe in particular stands.

NOTE: The latest demographic tally from The Netherlands can be found here.

Glenn Reynolds provides a few interesting links today. It seems Europe-in-decline watch is turning into a nice little industry all by itself and there is lots to be found here on this site. Two qualifications though: (a) there are regional differences within Europe, so the 'decline-template' should be used carefully and (b) whatever comes to Europe will reach North America's shores, eventually.

I have been a longtime fan of Camille Paglia, in particular because she is a non-conventional thinker and able to destruct both the left and the right with her razor sharp wit. The interview with her yesterday in Salon - in which she covers a variety of current topics - is a must-read.

While clearly identifying Iraq as a mess and Bush as "out of his depth" this onetime Democrat has no qualms about reducing her party to absolute rubble. More importantly, she understands the challenges of our future better than most of her contemporaries, note the following:

But my generation of baby-boom Democrats hasn't done much deep thinking about international issues except in terms of postmodernist fragmentation or fuzzy, smiley-face multiculturalism. We desperately need better candidates.

As for looking to the future here are Paglia's key indicators of impending doom:

I'm worried about the future of America insofar as our academically most promising students are being funneled through the cookie-cutter Ivy League and other elite schools and emerging with this callow anti-American, anti-military cast to their thinking. How are we ever going to get wise leadership or sophisticated diplomacy from people who have such a distorted, clichéd view about everything that's wrong with the United States?

And my favorite:

The more liberal parents are, the less contact their children have with religious ideas. That will surely disable our future American leaders from being able to understand the religious commitment of Islamic fundamentalists. Liberal journalists often seem incredulous about how anyone would seek death for religious principles. But that was the entire history of early Christianity, when the saints willingly sought martyrdom. We're heading into that world again.

Paglia is not calling for a religious revival, but for a measure of historical and religious awareness. Looking around me I am astounded to note how incredibly shallow historical knowledge is these days, especially among the 'well-educated' middle classes, the group supposedly forming the backbone of our society. It is one of the key reasons why western societies are so divided over rogue nations going nuclear and Muslim zealots blowing themselves up on commuter trains: most of us simply can’t recognize the phenomenon, much less conceive of any action to protect ourselves against it.

Even as a secular person, I would still strongly advocate to regain some of the moral bearings that religion has given us and at the same time try and raise a new generation with some basic historical awareness. The fact that I grew up in a house stacked with historical works and a father who had seen – and taken me – to war cemetery after war cemetery in Europe did at least leave me in a position where I could write the stuff that I write here on this site.

And Paglia is therefore on the mark in arguing that the absence of any clear leadership from either the right or the left in these challenging times is so troubling. So far we’ve been lucky in escaping any real disaster but we better start investing in a new generation that is bound to face situations where luck is no longer a sufficient enough tool to ward of our destruction.

Have a good weekend. Next week it will be Theo Van Gogh week over here.

Don't miss Michelle Malkin's video interview with Mark Steyn. Again, demographics, Europe and US-European relationships feature prominently.

UPDATE: And for Steyn aficionados, here is another interview with him at Human Events. Yes, he is promoting a book.

Timothy Garton Ash weighs in on the Armenian Genocide bill which passed in France last week, and pleased he is not:

No one can legislate historical truth. In so far as historical truth can be established at all, it must be found by unfettered historical research, with historians arguing over the evidence and the facts, testing and disputing each other's claims without fear of prosecution or persecution.

In the tense ideological politics of our time, this proposed bill is a step in exactly the wrong direction. How can we credibly criticise Turkey, Egypt or other states for curbing free speech, through the legislated protection of historical, national or religious shibboleths, if we are doing ever more of it ourselves?

It is a clear message to those that argue that criticizing religion, culture and denying tragic events of the past tend to inflame, offend and polarize. They argue that we need certain laws to control our ‘malign’ impulses that trigger the need to say or write things that are beyond conventional truths or that are not ‘socially acceptable’. That approach not only neutralizes debate, it rejects mechanisms such as research, analysis, rationality, and whatever other tools we have at our disposal to find some sort of balance or agreement on what is right or wrong. Garton Ash is right that we lose our credibility if we pass laws that chip away at the basic freedoms that our societies have been built on. What is more, we will lose ourselves.

The notion of Europe’s demographic bust is questioned once more. France's policies to avoid one are apparently paying off through some clever social engineering:

But the propensity of women here to have more babies has little to do with notions of French romance or the population's formerly strong religious ties to the Roman Catholic Church.

France heavily subsidizes children and families from pregnancy to young adulthood with liberal maternity leaves and part-time work laws for women. The government also covers some child-care costs of toddlers up to 3 years old and offers free child-care centers from age 3 to kindergarten, in addition to tax breaks and discounts on transportation, cultural events and shopping.

Very few countries so far have been able to get childcare, inextricably linked to birthrates, right. A prime example are the Dutch where women have been urged by relentless government campaigning to join the workforce, but where any solid childcare plans to support these policies have been sorely lacking. It is not that different here in Canada where the current conservative government has been trying to encourage moms or dads to stay at home, but the monetary reward for that so far has been paltry to say the least. And that is where the essence of encouraging birth rates and extended childcare is: to what extent can the state interfere and fund it all?

For the statist French that has been a relatively easy question to answer and that is why they are getting results. Now the issue is whether all these babies will eventually find a job in France’s moribund economy.

In November’s edition of Prospect Eric Kaufmann puts forward the idea that Europe may follow America in terms of demographics and in turn become a more conservative and religious entity, leaving its liberal-secular peak behind in the past. So, instead of the popular immigration and economics induced demise, he suggests this alternative:

Even so, religiosity—as belief rather than attendance—significantly predicts a more conservative ideological orientation. Though we are unlikely to see the rise of evangelical Christian politics in Europe, we may find a long-term drift towards more conservative social values. Europeans will become more "traditional" on moral issues like abortion, family values, religious education and gay marriage. Inter-faith co-operation between Christians and Muslims on these issues is quite possible since ecumenical structures are already in place in most countries to facilitate it. The ease with which conservative Protestants and traditionalist Catholics and Jews have co-operated in the US may be taken as evidence. Much will depend on how these ideological synergies are channelled by parties and electoral systems in different countries, but by the mid-21st century, the peak of secular European politics will be long past. As in America, politicians will need to stay on the right side of religious sentiment to ensure they are not outflanked by their opponents.

It’s an interesting theory and you should read the whole article to appreciate the complexity of projecting demographic and social trends. Stanley Kurtz at The Corner is on the mark in arguing that Kaufmann‘s prediction may not be all that reliable, but that we equally can not afford to take any other scenario for granted all that easily.

I’ve long argued that pessimism of the ‘Sharia 2050’ nature relies on overly simplistic assumptions. However promoting such scenarios can help today in trying to alter tomorrow’s outcomes. Kaufmann has just given us a few more tools to predict and influence that future.

A very worthwhile podcast interview by Ed Driscoll with Mark Steyn on TCS.

French writer and high-school philosophy teacher Robert Redeker is the latest in the list of Europeans whose life is no longer safe as a result of exercising their right to free speech. The list is getting longer and is almost exclusively European. And as this Time piece reveals, those on it can not automatically assume that their rights are wholeheartedly supported by the authorities who often want to hedge their own ambivalent position.

Here is an instructive interview with German-Syrian political scientist Bassam Tibi who has actively studied and campaigned for better methods of Muslim integration in Europe. Read the whole interview, but the most salient bit is this when Tibi was asked if an Islam conference organized by Germany’s Interior minister had yielded any results:

No, because the biggest taboo is that there even is a conflict at all. Everyone denies that. Instead people talk about misunderstandings and how these should be resolved. But a conflict of values is not a misunderstanding. Islamic orthodoxy and the German constitution are not compatible. And that is why the Islam conference failed.

And being in Germany, Tibi was able to delve into the historic vaults and demonstrate how you can de-program some totalitarian minds:

I am thinking in particular about the re-education programs which were carried out in Germany after the Third Reich. Social studies teachers and political science faculties were given the task of turning young people into democrats. That worked then. Why shouldn't we have a similar model for Muslims? In youth clubs, or during Islamic instruction in schools. Of course it takes a long time, 50 years say, but we have to start.

A pretty robust approach if you asked me, and one with a proven track record. Now brace yourself for the comprehensive debate over such a curriculum’s content and, even worse, its mandatory implementation. In that respect Europe has changed from the late forties and early fifties, and, not for the better.

Since I do not want to sound overly alarmist and let one incident define a broad social trend, I initially stayed away from the attacks on ambulances in The Netherlands. Yet there was simply too much to ignore and last night another incident occurred, in my old hometown of all places:

Two police officers in Vlaardingen were slightly injured last night after they offered assistance to two ambulance workers after they were threatened. In the downtown area of the city they were set upon when trying to help someone who had lost consciousness.

The reason for the threatening behaviour wasn’t clear. The windows of the ambulance were kicked in after which the police was called in. When it arrived some 250 men turned against the police.

Crime numbers however it seems are down, no doubt providing some good ammunition for the governing parties during the election campaign. It is probably harder to come up with indicators that measure the moral rot that enables some to attack first aid crews, as well as police when they arrive on the scene.

Michelle Malkin writes about how the Bratz culture is corrupting our young girls and how we need to find better role models. Couldn't agree more. But she ends with a remarkable mea culpa:

Not that it's so easy. I confess I broke down and let my 6-year-old daughter have a Bratz lunchbox. Now she wants to be a Bratz doll for Halloween, an idea that warrants only one word (a word not said often enough): "No."

And sure enough, what did the Dorsmans do a few months back after being pressured by a six and four year old? They made a Bratz birthday cake for the four year old. It was a Baby Bratz one, but still. Bad, bad, bad.

Not sure if this falls into the category of 'better late than never', but it does indicate a willingness to take a clear stance and relegate cultural relativism to the sidelines:

The president of the European Commission expressed disappointment that European leaders failed to defend Pope Benedict XVI over his recent remarks about Islam, in comments published Sunday.

Jose Manuel Barroso said that while Europe must take the threat of Islamic extremists "very seriously," it must not confuse tolerance with "a form of political correctness" that puts others' values above its own.

"I was disappointed that there weren't more European leaders who said, 'Of course the pope has the right to express his point of view,'" Barroso told Germany's Welt am Sonntag weekly. "We must defend our values."

Barroso also urged Europeans to encourage moderate Islamic leaders to take a stronger stance against the extremists.

"The problem is not the comments of the pope, but the reaction of the extremists," Barroso said.

Encouraging.

And there is another good debate about Europe and its challenged future on the Blow Week in Review, this week featuring Mark Steyn, Glenn Reynolds and Austin Bay.

But the recoil of many Dutch people from Hirsi Ali suggests that the tolerance about which Holland preens is a compound of intellectual sloth and moral timidity. She was more trouble than the Dutch evidently think free speech is worth.

[ ...]

But Europe, she thinks, is invertebrate. After two generations without war, Europeans "have no idea what an enemy is." And they think, she says, that leadership is an antiquated notion because they believe that caring governments can socialize everyone to behave well, thereby erasing personal accountability and responsibility.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali coins a new term for the old continent while having lunch with George Will. A riveting read.

Yes, Pope Benedict XVI fits into that long line of polemicists who have in- or unintentionally run afoul of the Muslim world as Der Spiegel argues here. Rushdie, Hirsi Ali and of course Theo van Gogh come to mind. But if we use that analogy than almost immediately it becomes evident that the Pope’s comments have most likely not been that inadvertent after all. At least I believe that this pontiff is far too clever and experienced to have miscalculated the impact of his comments, he was after all the ideological force behind his media savvy predecessor, John Paul II.

The question now of course is if the free wrold needs to rally behind what Christopher Hitchens calls a “moribund church” or the force of secular reason in dealing with radical Islam. The Pope has put his option the table, but I fear that there will not be that many takers. On the other hand we know that reason and secularism are, despite their compelling nature, not exactly providing the morally strong cohesion that we need going forward. And therein we find the hard problem: the West remains far more divided than its current opponents who despite their own internal divisions have embraced something that we seemed to have lost a long time ago. Like him or not, our German pontiff is probably one of the few to have articulated that particular weakness.

Andrew Sullivan is back from his sojourn, part of which he spent in Amsterdam. I was looking forward to some interesting observations, but alas, even our Sully is stuck in the same old rut when it comes to defining things Dutch:

It was nonetheless eye-opening to visit a free country, compared with the U.S. Observing people actually allowed to relax over a joint and a cappuccino in a coffee-house, or buy some soul-expanding mushrooms at small, regulated stores as common as Starbucks was a reminder that not every society is terrified of pleasure or freedom or happiness.

It depends on how you define freedom, but compared to the US and Canada, the Dutch are probably overregulated and overtaxed to an extraordinary degree, so let's keep things in perspective. Yes, this is probably a function of being one of the world’s most densely populated nations, but also because of a predominant culture that in the post-war years came to believe deeply in relieving the individual from as much responsibility as possible, the nanny state in full swing. Yet, that overarching and impersonal state at the same time retreated to let individuals flourish completely unhindered in their own domain. Sounds paradoxical, but there is no other way to explain it I think: we take care of you and you can essentially do whatever you like. The breeding ground of hedonist man.

Note that I am not opposed to drug legalization, on the contrary, but the Dutch model has somehow created sizeable groups of people that are devoid of any moral or normative compass. Consider the latest, from today’s news:

The CNV Companies Union raised the alarm about the aggression with which ambulance staff and paramedics are confronted. Last month one paramedic was assaulted in Amsterdam. This happened after he decided to treat a woman who had become unwell, something that was not fully appreciated by bystanders.

"The aggression is often the result of wrong expectations the public has about the work of ambulance employees", according to Jaap Jongejan of the union. He thinks it is time for a campaign to raise the awareness among the public about what ambulances and paramedics do.

Note how Jongejan finds the solution in launching an “awareness campaign”, that great tool with which the welfare state seeks to educate its citizenry. It’s beyond belief to learn that a new phenomenon of randomly assaulting emergency staff is the topic, but there’s probably no telling what you reap if you engage in unfettered social experimentation. And there’s more:

This spring the department of Social Affairs announced that 60% of ambulance staff has been subjected to violence. According to the latest numbers a figure that has increased significantly since.

Now, there is probably no direct no correlation between smoking pot and attacking paramedics. Still, the increasing absence of basic moral and responsible behavior I believe can probably only be found in the toxic realm of an unbound citizenry and a state that has totally misread its role in a modern society. However free the Dutch are, the excesses of that freedom now beg for the state to enforce at least some normative behavior among its citizens, and that I am afraid will take more than just a simple awareness campaign.

Richard Fernandez of the Belmont Club has written an excellent essay for PJ Media on why reason needs to be subsidiary to faith when fighting a war. It echoes many of my favorite themes and directly addresses the issue as to why the West is so poorly positioned to face the jihadist threat.

While everyone is pre-occupied today with the forced conversion of the two released Fox journalists, it may be worthwhile to point to the increasing rate of voluntary conversions. From Time Magazine there is this absolutely must-read piece about westerners converting to Islam. It’s a topic I have touched on before and the phenomenon may not be as mind-boggling as it initially sounds. Affluent western societies have created a class of people looking for answers that somehow can not be found in freedom and individuality and, as it happens, there is a creed that does provide some of these answers:

But one common refrain is that in an increasingly secular world in which society's rules get looser by the day, Islam provides a detailed moral map covering everything from friendships to protecting the environment. And for Western youths, taking up Islam can also serve as an outlet for rebellion. A majority of converts, especially in Western Europe, are in their late teens or 20s. "Islam is a kind of refuge for those who are downtrodden and disenfranchised because it has become the religion of the oppressed," says Farhad Khosrokhavar, a Paris professor and the author of several books on Muslim extremism. "Previously--say, 20 years ago--they may have chosen communism or gone to leftist ideologies. Now Islam is the religion of those who fight against imperialism, who are treated unjustly by the arrogant Western societies and so on."

While I am open to jokes about this, the “moral map” argument is one that can not be dismissed that easily, especially in Europe which is far more secular and disoriented than the US and Canada. The outcome of a conflict between two competing ideological strains is often determined by the strength and coherence of each and I suspect that a religion that has submerged the individual in favor of a powerful group dogma will stand a good chance of having the upper hand when confronted with loosely organized self-serving individuals.

Sorry to resume blogging on such a pessimistic note. Communism could be defeated by demonstrating the benefits of wealth and freedom, but the grassroots of our new enemy isn’t particularly interested in either.

Not only did the Hirsi Ali affair bring down the Dutch government, it was a phenomenal example of what has gone wrong in western societies, particularly in Europe, over the past few decades. AEI’s Christopher DeMuth uses it as a case study to underline six common problems which that are accelerating the steady moral decay of the western world. They are, according to DeMuth, the following: (1) ” terrorism’s global reach and use of technology, (2) the social and political failures in the Middle East, (3) mass migration caused by wealth disparities, (4) failure of democracies, (5) the extreme division of labor and, one of my absolute favorites, (6) the fallout created by excessive wealth and self-gratification:

Sixth, life in the wealthy liberal societies has become exceptionally pleasant and gratifying. We like it that way, and many of us have come to resent any impositions on our repose and peace of mind. A striking characteristic of Western society, especially its elites, is that violence and the use of force have come to be abhorred per se--regardless of whether it is of the offensive, destructive sort or of the defensive, self-preserving sort.

Exactly.

And how it pollutes a new generation: Birthday registries for kids.

Today, four years ago.

Over at GayPatriot. Key excerpts:

One crucial difference between the US and Europe is this: in the US, the question of whether “Christianism” represents a threat to American secular democracy has long been the subject of brutally frank and passionate public debate; in most of Europe, by contrast, an equally honest, no-holds-barred debate about the threat of European Islam remains unimaginable. And Europe is paying the price for it.

And:

Many leftists, including some gay “leaders,” actually admire Islam for the same reason they once admired Soviet Communism – because it’s the only big-time ideology that won’t knuckle under to American capitalism, which, in their eyes, is the world’s great evil.

Read the whole thing.

For some obscure reason I always find myself going through the morning of 9/11 step by step, minute by minute, hijacked plane by hijacked plane. Even now there are days when I try to relive it and bring some order into that chaotic morning. If you go and see United 93 – which I did yesterday – you will go through exactly the same, an almost real-time experience of reliving of what happened that morning. And order you need to create as the movie reveals the chaos and confusion that governed the various flight control centers, something brought home poignantly by the fact that a number of the actors are in fact the actual people that manned these centers on 9/11.

Walking out of the theater there wasn’t the feeling that there was anything new or revolutionary, no; all the facts were very clear and transparent before and after watching the film. The advance question was what director Ron Greengrass would make of it all, and it is fair to say he delivered, even in the parts where speculation was required to fill in some of the factual blanks. While everyone is hyped over the contrast between the praying hijacker and some passengers reciting the Lord’s Prayer, I was taken aback by one other peculiar confrontation. It’s the moment where one of the flight attendants hurries back to the center of the plane to help a severely injured passenger – knifed by one of the terrorists – and flashes the Red Cross emergency kit in front of a terrorist with a look on her face saying, “Please”. The hijacker relents and allows her to treat the dying man, but it was probably the one area where Greengrass’ creative license was used a little too generously.

Yet, it did a number of important things. It highlighted that the hijackers struggled with a degree of uncertainty, it pinpointed the religious aspect with the obvious Red Cross crusader connotation, but above all it allowed the viewer to distill a measure of hope that things might work out well – something that defies logic and yet you’re tempted by it. It gives you something to cling to during the final minutes: there is hope; maybe the airliner will land safely after all. That expectation is fueled by the presence of a pilot with one-engine experience among the passengers who bravely declares that with radio help from the ground he could possibly land flight 93. You’re drawn into the possibility that the passenger revolt might actually work.

So my re-piecing and re-ordering of events may after all be a subconscious attempt to find that redeeming shard of information that will somehow transform 9/11 into something more palatable, something that can neutralize the fear and uncertainty created on that day. Yet, I know better but the omnipresence of the question “Is it too soon?” over the past week indicates that many actually think that the shrill reality of that day can not be revisited again. It points to a feeling that America is still busy looking for facts that can sanitize the horrendous attacks into something that won’t be as haunting, something that won’t repeat itself.

And therein of course do we find United 93’s ultimate strength. The savage and dreadful way in which the plane falls into the hijackers' hands, the ultimate futility of the resistance and the definitive crash into that field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, throws the bare facts once more in front of America and the world at large. There are no redeeming points, there was no hope on that day and any group that is capable of hijacking and crashing four commercial airliners within a few hours is no doubt poised for more in the future. But that knowledge remains something that many would like to blot out conveniently, something which we have also witnessed in Europe following its first encounters with jihadist terror. The justifiable and positive instinct to move on has a nasty fellow traveler called the willingness to forget.

So, there can’t be enough United 93-type films. The test will be in how they evolve over time. Not only will more facts see the light of day, but our attitudes and perceptions will develop to a level where again the events of that morning are reworked and reinterpreted. As long as we keep doing that there is hope that we can face and fight that very real and lethal terrorist threat. But, if we give in to sanitizing history and creating false expectations we are lost. Greengrass' film provides a sliver of hope that we will not give in and have the ability to fight, but the story of 9/11 needs to be retold relentlessly before I can really begin to believe that.

NOTE: There is a huge round-up of blogger reviews over at Hot Air.

AFTERTHOUGHT: I did review one other Greengrass film earlier: Bloody Sunday. That by the way was not exactly a balanced and overly factual piece of work, but it proves the point that filmed entertainment has indeed an unusual capability to rewrite history.

Indeed, an alarming number of Western Europeans don't seem to grasp that freedom and prosperity aren't the default condition of the human species - and that when these things come under threat, a sanguine passivity isn't the best repsonse.

Bruce Bawer, While Europe Slept, page 133

Take the entirety of human history and you will note that the rare combination of freedom and prosperity is an aberration. It's great to have it, but we'll have to fight to preserve it.

In all my writings about