European Decline
June 29, 2015 — Steven Hayward
As the Greek economy continues its predictable slow motion collapse, one of the early WSJ account of the inevitable bank closures and capital controls imposed yesterday has one of the funniest sentences I’ve read in a long time, but which is also fully revealing of the decadence of the liberal mind: “How can something like this happen without prior warning?” asked Angeliki Psarianou, a 67-year-old retired public servant, who stood
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June 1, 2015 — John Hinderaker
Germany’s economy dominates the EU, but if demography is destiny–and it is–then, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard argues in the Telegraph, Germany is doomed. I had not realized that the numbers are so grim: Germany’s birth rate has collapsed to the lowest level in the world and its workforce will start plunging at a faster rate than Japan’s by the early 2020s, seriously threatening the long-term viability of Europe’s leading economy. … The
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May 3, 2015 — Steven Hayward
Britain goes to the polls on Thursday to elect a new government. Did you know this? It is hardly getting any media notice here in the U.S., perhaps because our lazy media can’t take its eyes off the long coronation of Queen Hillary. Anyway, the polls are a scramble, and everyone paying attention (which means only Michael Barone and Henry Olsen) is saying it is the most unpredictable election in
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February 17, 2015 — John Hinderaker
That eye-catching possibility was raised by this Daily Beast article by Barbie Latza Nadeau: “Italy Fears ISIS Invasion From Libya.” Last weekend in Italy, as the threat of ISIS in Libya hit home with a new video addressed to “the nation signed with the blood of the cross” and the warning, “we are south of Rome,” Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi shuttered up the Italian embassy in Tripoli and raised
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January 28, 2015 — Steven Hayward
Greece has elected a far-left socialist government that plans to dump austerity (and perhaps the Euro currency with it) into the dustbin of history. The socialist government is also likely to harsh some mellows among enviro-socialists who think socialism is the path for saving the planet. The Guardian reports the reality: Syriza’s election victory has kindled hopes of an environmental champion pushing for greater climate ambition on the European stage,
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January 4, 2015 — Steven Hayward
With lefty nostalgists like Paul Krugman pining away for a return to the punitive income tax rates of up to 90 percent in the 1950s, it is worth taking in what just happened in France. France’s unreconstructed socialist president Francois Hollande made a big splash upon taking office of instituting a 75 percent income tax on all incomes over 1 million Euros. So how’d that work out? From Yahoo news
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October 16, 2014 — John Hinderaker
Hamburg has become the scene of street fighting between Islamic supporters of ISIS and expatriate Kurds: Parts of downtown Hamburg, the second-largest city in Germany, resembled a war zone after hundreds of supporters of the jihadist group Islamic State [IS] engaged in bloody street clashes with ethnic Kurds. … The unrest began on the evening of October 7, when around 400 Kurds gathered outside the Al-Nour mosque near the central
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September 7, 2014 — Steven Hayward
We all know that the Christian faith is slowly dying out in most of Europe, but did you happen to catch the Wall Street Journal story last Tuesday about how Germany taxes churchgoers, and how a proposed hike in the tax on churchgoers is expected to reduce church attendance even further? Here’s the lede: FRANKFURT—In Germany, being an official church member usually means paying an extra tax. But a change
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August 9, 2014 — Steven Hayward
Scratch a Progressive, and they’ll tell you that their ideal for what America should look like is the “social democracies” of enlightened Europe. That’s why we need higher minimum wage laws, pro-union mandates, and other regulations on the job market. (One new idea in The New Yorker this week is a three-day work week.) Meanwhile, younger Americans are finding it harder than ever to get started in today’s economy, and
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September 19, 2013 — Steven Hayward
Just when you think there’s no possible political future for Anthony Weiner. . . News out of Germany reported in today’s Wall Street Journal about how the Green Party, whose deep radicalism was muted in exchange for a share of power in center-left coalition governments over the last 20 years, began its political existence by championing, among other things, pedophilia. On Monday, a political scientist hired by the party to
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August 30, 2013 — Steven Hayward
UPDATE: Turns out this is not from John Cleese, though it has an Aristotelian authenticity that causes me to leave it up anyway. This is making the rounds, and should not be missed: ALERTS TO THREATS IN 2013 EUROPE From JOHN CLEESE The English are feeling the pinch in relation to recent events in Syria and have therefore raised their security level from “Miffed” to “Peeved.” Soon, though, security levels
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August 20, 2013 — Steven Hayward
Reihan Salam reported yesterday on National Review Online that Sweden has passed the United States in hours worked per working age adults. Let that sink in for a moment: Swedish workers–living in the enlightened social democratic paradise according to the American left–are working harder than Americans. The figures Reihan cites are rather startling: The only reason the welfare state remains solvent is that an astonishing 85 percent of working-age native
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August 9, 2013 — Scott Johnson
We returned from our National Review cruise of the Norwegian fjords yesterday afternoon. I want to offer a few notes for interested readers. We loved the cruise for all the obvious reasons. The programming was great and our fellow NR cruisers were outstanding. We met people we liked every day. The cruise is expensive and many of the cruisers are retired or of retirement age, but its therapeutic value all
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June 2, 2013 — John Hinderaker
After two Muslims stabbed an off-duty soldier to death and attempted to behead him, in broad daylight on a busy London street, it was widely reported that a dangerous, anti-Muslim backlash was in progress. British authorities arrested several individuals for making anti-Muslim comments on Facebook or Twitter, hoping, apparently, to stem the tide of anti-Muslim violence. But did the widely-anticipated, and even widely-reported, epidemic of anti-Muslim violence materialize? No, it
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May 27, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
In a post called “The Inevitable Decline of Great Britain (Con’t)”, John wrote that “in Great Britain, the authorities have no idea what to do about the real problem, an endless series of murders and attempted murders by fanatics yelling ‘Allahu Akbar!’” And John is right. However, the British public has at least a clue. A survey taken for the Daily Mail shows that almost two-thirds of voters in the
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May 25, 2013 — John Hinderaker
In Stockholm, riots have taken place for six consecutive nights, with windows smashed, cars and schools set on fire, and policemen pelted with rocks. This would normally be considered a major problem, but the Swedes seem to be taking it pretty casually: Since last Sunday, May 19, rioters have taken to the streets of Stockholm’s suburbs every night, torching cars, schools, stores, office buildings and residential complexes. Yesterday, a police
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May 24, 2013 — John Hinderaker
The brutal murder of an off-duty soldier by two Muslim activists continues to dominate the news in Great Britain. The scene was utterly bizarre: in broad daylight, in a busy section of London, the two Muslims apparently ran the soldier down with a car, within a block or two of his barracks, and then attacked him with knives and a meat cleaver. They attempted to behead him, apparently not quite
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