EUROPEAN PREVIEW (via Kevin Whited):

Impromptus (Jay Nordlinger, September 20, 2002, National Review)

It is significant that, as he’s losing late in the campaign, Germany’s Edmund Stoiber is playing the Muslim card — for that is what the immigration card is, a Muslim card. This is the great sleeping issue in much of Europe. It almost won election for the Right in Sweden, of all places.

Stoiber’s opponent, the incumbent Gerhard Schroeder, said darkly, “Whoever tries to create majorities at the expense of minorities” is a baddun. “Whatever has to do with hatred against minorities must be met with our decisive opposition.” Understand that this is how the Left talks: Any questions about immigration and assimilation must be dismissed as “hatred of minorities.” The Democratic party here does this, of course, constantly.

This is significant but Mr. Nordlinger seems to have missed its flipside, which is equally significant. Gerhard Schoeder pulled ahead of Mr. Stoiber by playing his own Muslim card: opposition to the Judeo-American war with Muslim Iraq. This divide between one party doing the bidding of Germany's rising Muslim population and the other representing the dimming interests of the "natives" is going to be a central feature of Germany's and of much of Europe's future. Demographic imbalances make it certain that the former will soon be in permanent ascendancy over the latter, at which point nations like Germany will face a difficult decision about whether to become a democratic but mainly Muslim country or to jettison democracy and retain ethnically European government by force. The important aspect of this for American purposes is that a dying Europe should no longer be considered a reliable ally in the effort to vindicate freedom, democracy, and Western Civilization. Posted by Orrin Judd at September 20, 2002 1:16 PM