European Decline
May 26, 2026 — Scott Johnson
Graham Greene designated his less serious fiction “entertainments,” though he eventually dispensed with the designation. One such “entertainment” was the thriller Ministry of Fear (1943, now with an introduction by Alan Furst), turned into the 1944 film of the same name directed by Fritz Lang. Greene’s novel comes to mind this morning in connection with the Brussels Signal daily newsletter Brussels Calling! From Brussels Calling! I learn that Spain has
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September 1, 2025 — John Hinderaker
From the Babylon Bee: In what political analysts described as a historic turning point for Western Civilization, Great Britain announced a “Reverse Crusade” where they invite Muslims to come and destroy England. With the original Crusades of the Britons journeying to the Middle East to free the Holy Land from Islamic rule long in the past, UK leaders said it was time to wipe the slate clean and turn the
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May 9, 2025 — John Hinderaker
In the London Telegraph, Diana Furchtgott-Roth traces the economic suicide of Western Europe: At the Munich Leaders’ Meeting in Washington DC this week, vice-president JD Vance put his finger on a major cause of Europe’s recent decline. “One of the things that the Germans were very good about,” he declared, “is that they had kept the industrial strength of their economy consistent with the first world standard of living. But
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February 14, 2025 — Steven Hayward
Appearing at the annual Munich Security Conference today, Vice President J.D. Vance torched Europe in a manner they’ve never heard before. I kept seeing squibs from the speech on social media this morning, and couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Some excerpts: The threat that I worry the most about vis a vis Europe is not Russia, it’s not China, it’s not any other external actor. What I worry about
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January 18, 2025 — Steven Hayward
For a long time I have been speculating that the time will come when Europe faces a choice—it will need to expel large numbers of culturally incompatible immigrants, or face the extinction of their national identities. It is easy to make the case that Europe will choose, by default, the second option. But perhaps the turn is coming, from the most unexpected place. From Reuters: Sweden seeks to change constitution
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February 25, 2024 — Steven Hayward
This morning I stumbled across a Tweet linking to an Australian “60 Minutes” segment about the unassimilable migrants that are causing the crime rate and other social dysfunctions to soar in Sweden. Turns out the episode is seven years old, but since we don’t see Australia’s “60 Minutes” here (and our CBS “60 Minutes” won’t touch this subject with a ten meter pole), I doubt little has changed in the
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November 22, 2023 — Steven Hayward
The Netherlands went to the polls today in a national election and Geert Wilders and his Freedom Party (the PVV) won the most votes. “Polite opinion” (that is, the EU and the major media) have long considered Wilders beyond the pale, on the same plane as Nigel Farage in Britain or Marine Le Pen in France. After all, he is anti-immigration and a Euro-skeptic, and as such not clubbable. Like
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October 21, 2023 — Steven Hayward
An unusual experience on the train from Salzburg to Munich yesterday. The train stopped at the German border, whereupon eight police officers, well armed and wearing full body armor, boarded the train and asked to see passports. I haven’t had a passport check on a European train in years, and I thought they were obsolete in the era of the Schengen Zone that allows visa-free travel throughout the European Union.
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October 19, 2023 — Steven Hayward
SALZBURG, Austria, October 19—Back in August of 1990 I attended my first-ever meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society in Munich, West Germany, not far from my current temporary location. I was still a sluggish graduate student at the time, long past when I should have completed my dissertation, but somehow I had contrived to snag a fellowship to attend, and present a paper whose precise topic I don’t now recall,
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September 19, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Everyone knows that Germany was the “first mover” on the net-zero bandwagon, spending more than a trillion Euros over the last 15 years on its “energiewende” (“energy revolution”) only to see their greenhouse gas emissions begin rising again, and last year reviving coal-power to keep the lights on. One thing they did achieve was causing consumer energy prices to roughly double. I guess that “wind-and-solar-are-cheaper” isn’t working out according to
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September 13, 2023 — Steven Hayward
To the Finland Station is Edmund Wilson’s magnum opus about the long train of revolutionary thought and action stretching from Jules Michelet to Lenin, culminating in the October revolution in 1917 that gave birth to Soviet Russia. It has an especially vivid account of the journey of the sealed train that delivered Lenin—”like a plague bacillus,” as Churchill put it in The World Crisis—to Petrograd. Yesterday I arrived for a
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September 2, 2023 — John Hinderaker
In Europe in general, and Denmark in particular. Mark Steyn recalls the Mohammed cartoon crisis of 2005 and the sequels that have played out over the ensuing years: In 2005 Jyllands-Posten, one of the biggest-selling newspapers in Denmark, as part of an exploration of the state of free speech, was willing to publish a dozen cartoons of Mohammed by prominent cartoonists. In 2010, on the fifth anniversary, I was given
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September 15, 2022 — Steven Hayward
I’ll bet Tom Friedman would really like to indulge his authoritarian impulse to be “China for a day” (because then we could impose the “right solutions” to all our problems) right now. Today he uncorked a primal scream whose subtext is: Sarah Palin (and Donald Trump) were right: we should drill, baby, drill! here in the U.S. Yes—for oil and natural gas! Don’t believe me? It turns out that Putin
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September 13, 2022 — Steven Hayward
The Washington Post reported yesterday that someone woke up Slow Joe: White House alarm rises over Europe as Putin threatens energy supply White House officials are growing increasingly alarmed about Europe’s energy crisis and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s threats to force a bleak winter on the continent. Seeking to punish Russia for the invasion of Ukraine and force a retreat, Western allies have moved to set a cap on what
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September 11, 2022 — Steven Hayward
Perhaps the most memorable comment at the outbreak of World War I—or at least the one quoted in every history book—came from the British foreign minister Sir Edward Grey: “The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our life-time.” The first half of this statement suddenly applies again to Europe’s energy crisis that threatens a cold and dark winter ahead, and we’ll have
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February 21, 2022 — Steven Hayward
I don’t have a firm conclusion about just what we should do about the Ukraine crisis (beyond not sending Kamala Harris to Munich to embarrass the country). We ought to arm the Ukrainians with all the weapons they can use (short of nukes), impose serious sanctions on Russia, and perhaps some heavy cyber actions. But it is also worth considering that if Germany won’t stand up with the rest of the
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January 3, 2022 — Steven Hayward
To say “opinion is divided about Eric Zemmour,” the right-wing candidate for president of France, is an understatement, and we have heard from a number of sensible observers of French politics that Zemmour might not be the best idea. Certainly the mainstream media is as panicked about him as they are about Trump. Some conservative critics say he a lightweight, a poser, the equivalent of Bill O’Reilly, and running chiefly to
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