European Decline

Waiting for Brexit

Featured image I haven’t had time yet to put together my thoughts on the upcoming vote on “Brexit”—the referendum in the U.K. on whether to drop out of the European Union (I say vote Yes on leaving), but for the moment we should take in the useful analysis of the defects of the EU on the old “Yes, Minister” series: »

Europe Goes Back to Sleep

Featured image Back in late February I reported (“Be Like France”) how the French appeared to be taking the problem of Islamic terrorism seriously, as opposed to Obama, who thinks it a risk somewhere not far above infection from hangnails. You can call it all off. Europe is going back to sleep. From yesterday’s WSJ: Hollande Retreats from Plan to Change French Constitution PARIS—French President François Hollande abandoned a plan to strengthen »

“Europe Might be Dying”

Featured image Last night it was all over the news that a planned rally against fear today in Brussels had to be canceled because of . . . fear. Not enough security available to allow it to go forward. This really is a literal case of the terrorists winning. Another leading French intellectual, Bernard Henri-Levy, gave an interview to the BBC on Thursday that is very bracing in its conclusion that “Europe »

Visit Brussels, You’ll Have a Blast

Featured image If you want to take in the depths of European denial, check out this two minute video the Belgian tourist promoters put together a few months back saying, “Problem? There’s no problem here. It’s all the media’s fault. . . Don’t listen to CNN.” »

Let’s Be Like France—Seriously

Featured image It is great sport to make fun of the French as cheese-eating surrender monkeys and worse, but I think there might be some game for a candidate, especially one with initials “DT,” to suggest we borrow a page from the French in the war against Islamic terrorism. Mark Lilla of Columbia University, one of the smarter liberals around whose writing I always try to take in, has a long essay »

Lord’s Prayer Banned As Offensive

Featured image This is one of those news stories that you think must have originated at The Onion, but I am pretty sure it is legitimate. Either that, or someone has hacked the Associated Press’s computers: The Church of England is threatening legal action over the rejection of a one-minute film featuring the Lord’s Prayer that it wanted to run before showings of the new Star Wars film that opens shortly before »

Heard About “the Wallstrom Affair”?

Featured image Did you hear anything about the dustup in Sweden in the spring over the remarks of foreign minister Margot Wallstrom? She belongs to Sweden’s Social Democratic Party and holds impeccable left-of-center credentials, and also served for a time as the Commissioner for the Environment at the European Union, where she said all of the politically correct platitudes about global warming and sustainable development. She also worked at the UN for »

EU Moves Step Closer to Open Tyranny

Featured image As Britain moves closer to a referendum some time in the next couple of years about whether to remain in the European Union, news out of Portugal this week ought to be giving heartburn to Brussels Sprouts everywhere. Portugal’s voters recently elected a left-leaning anti-EU majority to its parliament, but the country’s president is refusing to allow the new majority to form a government. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard reports in The Telegraph: »

Politics Comes to Switzerland

Featured image Sometimes I hear people, usually apolitical libertarians, point to Switzerland as a model of a decentralized and de-politicized government. There’s some truth to this, but mostly Switzerland is an anomalous country (Hitler didn’t think it important to conquer), or, as I sometimes describe it, Switzerland is essentially a giant bank with a few well-run public services. That may be changing. From the Telegraph today: Anti-immigration party wins Swiss election in »

U.K. Labour Party Commits Suicide

Featured image Three weeks ago we took note of the extraordinary candidacy of the far-left Jeremy Corbyn to be the next leader of the Labour Party, how it would represent the suicide of the Labour Party. Put it this way: Corbyn makes Bernie Sanders look like one of those dreaded “neo-liberals” of Naomi Klein’s self-induced nightmares. (At least Sanders is pro-Israel, unlike Corbyn, who could be a stenographer for Hamas.) Well, today »

Refugee Logistics: Nothing Happens for No Good Reason (2)

Featured image Last summer we saw the spectacle of thousands of central America children turning up on America’s southern border, and I noted at the time, in “Nothing Happens for No Good Reason,” that it was unlikely that the sudden flood of immigrants to the U.S. simply happened spontaneously. Someone had to put the word out in central America to create critical mass of “migrants” as well as organizing the logistics to »

EU Refugee Hypocrisy

Featured image Hans Rosling is one of my favorite demographers and analysts of change over time. If you’ve never seen any of his Gapminder videos, you owe it to yourself to catch up (especially the one on the washing machine, which is guaranteed to enrage feminists). A few months ago he asked a simple question: why are “refugees/migrants” paying thousands to cross the Mediterranean in rickety boats when you can fly to »

Meanwhile, In Other News

Featured image In a startling turn of events, Greece yesterday capitulated fully to the European Union in terms much harsher than the terms the nation rejected a week ago in the referendum. Though more precisely everyone appears to have capitulated to Germany, as the French and Italians, among others, are reported to have supported more generous terms to Greece. So, perhaps the headline should be “Europe Capitulates to Germany.” Has a familiar »

Beware of Greeks Bearing Bonds

Featured image It appears Greece is slowly caving to the Germans, chiefly because the markets called the bluff of their tiny economy. Once it became evident that Greek default wouldn’t roil the world’s markets—bond spreads even on other weak Euro-states barely budged—Greece lost its leverage, despite the landslide referendum vote. (I think the market turmoil of China is much more significant at the moment.) But their leverage is not totally dissipated. Clearly »

What Obama Could Learn from the EU

Featured image What do the Greek crisis and the arms negotiations in Iran have in common? We keep extending the deadline and talking further in deference to the crazy people causing the problem. Only in the case of Greece, the EU has finally reached a point of “No” and meaning it, stopping the socialist centrifuge reducing the Greek economy to its constitutent parts. But the Obama foreign policy titans continue to extend »

Today’s Greek Chorus

Featured image In no particular order: • Remember the famous Fox Butterfield headline in the New York Times: “Crime Keeps on Falling, But Prisons Keep on Filling”?  Well yesterday the Times outdid itself with an early edition headline on the Greek crisis: “Trillions Spent, But Crises Like Greece’s Persist.” Gee: I wonder if there’s a connection? Maybe someone can ask Fox Butterfield. One wonders what the Times headline will be when it »

Looks Like We Called Greece Right

Featured image Two weeks ago we posted our first ever “Monday Morning Briefing” for Power Line VIP subscribers, which we hastened to add later may not appear always on Monday, and may be closer to “bi-weekly,” since bi-weekly is ambiguous: is that twice a week or every other week?  Just like everything else bi, isn’t it? (And I promised my mom long ago that I’d never be bi-anything. . .) Anyway, our »