AT LEAST IT WAS A CESSPOOL WHILE IT LASTED:

Beating swords into welfare cheques: Hedonistic benefits, low birth rates—Europe needs protection from itself (Mark Steyn, June 3, 2010, Maclean's)

The trick in this line of work is not to be right too soon. A couple of years back, I wrote a bestselling hate crime. Don’t worry, I’m not in plug mode; indeed, I shall eschew even mentioning the book’s title. But its general thesis is that the jig is up for much if not most of the Western world. “Alarmist,” pronounced Maclean’s, reflecting the general consensus of polite society here and in Europe.

Polite society has spent the years since playing catch-up. So if you don’t want your fin du civilisation analysis from a frothing right-wing loon you can now get it from the house-trained chaps at the New York Times:

“Europeans have boasted about their social model, with its generous vacations and early retirements, its national health care systems and extensive welfare benefits, contrasting it with the comparative harshness of American capitalism . . . ‘The Europe that protects’ is a slogan of the European Union.”

Protects from what? Right now, Europe mostly needs protection from itself, and its worst inclinations:

“With low growth, low birth rates and longer life expectancies, Europe can no longer afford its comfortable lifestyle." [...]

There is no precedent in human history for increased prosperity on declining human capital, even before you factor in the added costs of propping up a bunch of other nations facing even worse socio-economic arithmetic. Can mass immigration save you? No. You can never import enough people fast enough: according to Armin Laschet, “Integration Minister” of North Rhine-Westphalia, already 40 per cent of the children in the Fatherland’s cities are ethnically non-German, and thus the future of those cities will be non-German, too.

Could you ramp that number up to, oh, 70 per cent? Sure. But it still wouldn’t be sufficient to prop up an unsustainable economic model. Entire sovereign nations are now in the situation of a homeowner who’s fallen too far behind on the payments and has no prospect of catching up: you might as well just put the door keys in an envelope, leave ’em at the bank for the new owner, and move on.

There is nothing to mourn about the disappearance of the Europe the Enlightenment made.

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 3, 2010 4:54 PM