THE PROOF'S IN THE PEWLING:

Decadent Europe: The EU crisis can be read as evidence of a declining civilisation. Let's stop neocons gloating (Timothy Garton Ash, June 9, 2005, The Guardian)

[I]n 1976, Raymond Aron wrote a book called Plaidoyer pour l'Europe Décadente, translated into English as In Defence of Decadent Europe. [...]

Thirty years ago Aron worried about a kind of hedonistic self-indulgence characteristic of decadent societies. At the risk of sounding like a cross between Mary Whitehouse and Lord Longford, the thought does occasionally occur when flicking through British and European TV channels, from Celebrity Love Island, through Big Brother, to the endless onanistic German chatshows. Aron also worried about Europe's low birth rates, which in the meantime have become still lower. "The civilisation of self-centred enjoyment," he dared to write, "condemns itself to death when it loses interest in the future."

Of course, looked at from another viewpoint, liberal in a different sense, the very low birth rates in countries such as Spain, Italy and Germany are an expression of increased liberty: namely a woman's right to choose. But it's common sense that welfare states then need someone else to support so many pensioners. That someone is to hand: a young, vigorous, growing population just across the Mediterranean, eager to come and work here. But Europe is proving very bad at making Muslim immigrants feel at home. The Dutch nee vote was in significant part a vote against Muslim immigration, and the French non was in part against Turkey joining the EU.

It may not have escaped your attention that this analysis of European decadence bears a startling resemblance to that of American neoconservatives and anti-Europeans, against whose crude caricatures I have so often fought. To this I would say two things. First, American neocons would be idiots to gloat. Europe and America are two parts of one larger civilisation. If the old Europe on this side of the Atlantic goes down, it may help the new Europe on the other side of the Atlantic in short-term power relations, but it will be enormously damaging to US interests in the longer term.

Second, it's up to us to prove them wrong.

Even when he's trying to face reality squarely, Mr. Ash just can't grasp that decadent Europe isn't any longer paret of the same civilization as America.

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 9, 2005 12:00 AM