Mark is one of the most prolific thinkers and writers on the world stage. He has been somewhat out of commission of late, but has returned with a vengeance. Don’t miss his wide-ranging observations on the murder of two American servicemen by a German Muslim at Frankfurt’s airport. He comments on the weirdly inadequate response from “[t]he strange shrunken spectator who serves as president of the United States.” He notes the prevalence of lone wolf terrorists, who are now so numerous that they might organize “the Amalgamated Union of Lone Wolves and Isolated Extremists.” He comments on unsustainable entitlements:
In the U.S., the baby boomers did not have enough children to maintain their mid-20th-century social programs. I see that recent polls supposedly show that huge majorities of Americans don’t want any modifications to Medicare or Social Security. So what? It doesn’t matter what you “want.” The country’s broke, and you can vote yourself unsustainable quantities of government lollipops all you like, but all you’re doing is ensuring that when, eventually, you’re obliged to reacquaint yourself with reality, the shock will be far more devastating and convulsive.
And he returns to the German, of Kosovar extraction, who caused the “tragic event” that “took place” and “saddened” our President because our servicemen were “lost,” unifying demographic and ideological themes:
Bismarck, so shrewd and cynical about the backward Balkans, was also the father of the modern welfare state: When he introduced the old-age pension, you had to be 65 to collect and Prussian life expectancy was 45. Now life expectancy has near doubled, you get your pension a decade earlier, and, in a vain attempt to make that deformed math add up, Bismarck’s successors moved the old East/West faultline from the Balkans to the main street of every German city.
Including Frankfurt, where the “tragic event” “took place.”
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