A fascinating post over at Belmont Club on the decline of Europe is a recommended read, especially for the naysaying commenters on my earlier post on this subject.

Here’s a small sample:

Europe if not now then soon must accept that enlargement by itself can never fully compensate for the fundamental weakness of its demographics and economy. Even a ship as large as the Titanic eventually fills with water. French EU Foreign Minister Michel Barnier could not have spoken more eloquently of the dead-end French policy had become when he said the EU had no contingency plan in the event of a rejection [of the EU constitution]. “We have no plan B. You cannot have a plan B. It is ‘Yes’ and that’s the only way to discuss this item, so we go 100 percent for that outcome”. If wishes were horses then beggars would ride.

After sixty years of retreat from its colonial heyday, Europe is an idea whose back is to the wall. What it needs now is a new vision and leadership, which with some American help, may address the core of its weakness: suicidal demographics; cultural self-loathing; its oppressive socialist economies. The hour is late and the ship captained by fools but hope still remains.

There are some outstanding comments on the Belmont Club post, don’t miss them. A couple of my favorites:

Other factors to look at in Europe are:

1. The demographic disaster is continent-wide, meaning the influx of Muslims is the crucial, defining political issue.

2. The best and brightest continue to try to escape to Australia or Canada, leaving the elites at home even more ossified, inflexible, and incompetent.

See “One-third of Dutch people want to emigrate”: “A survey has indicated that 32 percent of Dutch people want to emigrate abroad and that just 51 percent are proud of the Netherlands.”

****

Any colonization effort which involves the usage of the indigenous people as low-level work force will eventually fail. The colonizers may initially beat the native people with better arms and technology, but over time the native people will assimulate the technology and weapons knowledge of the colonizers and use it against them. The French discovered that in Algeria, in IndoChina, and elsewhere.

The mistake that France made in its colonization effort, is that it wanted to export a gentry class, who would make the natives do the work while the gentry lived in leisure.

Now France (and Europe) is being colonized by foreign powers. The immigrant gentry (who the French call welfare recipients) have little interest in work or in assimulating, and grow in numbers rapidly. The people who do the work to hold it all up are decreasing as childless people retire and are not replaced.

****

If I summarize Wretchard’s thesis as tersely as possible, it comes out as: “Goodbye Europe—Hello Eurabia”

****

I’m not sure exactly what the hope is here. I can imagine terrorist outrages producing a ferocious turn to the right in Europe, Muslims becoming the enemy that justifies rapid rearmament, strict immigration controls, and a radical reform of the social welfare system. But even if European economies boomed overnight, who would be manning those enterprises? The demographic problem cannot be solved in any short run, and meanwhile Europe’s choices are few and bad. Birth rates in the old East Bloc countries are even worse than in Western Europe, so East-West migration only rearranges the deck chairs. I have no doubt that Europe would dearly love to have a Mexico across its southern border, instead of what they do have.

****

As Wretchard notes, the French currently seem to fear the Polish plumber more than they fear the Arab wilders. The French pols pimping of the EU (always with a wink and a nod to let the proles know who really would be running things) is not overcoming the reality that half of every Frenchman’s potential income is going to support either a bureaucrat or a wastrel. Perhaps some Frenchmen are even realizing that taxing those nasty capitalistic companies results in higher prices.

Whether the EU constitution passes or fails is a matter of indifference to me. I doubt that passage will speed up or slow down the economic collapse that only a change in demographic trend can cure. In a democracy, the people fully deserve the government that they get. Europe has been eating seed corn for forty years, the granaries are empty and winter is coming.

****
And my favorite, which captures my sentiments on Europe exactly:

I am not at all persuaded that America should help in the coming European meltdown. It seems to me that since Europe — and especially France and Germany — have tried their damndest to implode twice in the past century, (taking the whole rest of the world lemming-like with them over the cliff), that from a Darwinian standpoint, that should be allowed this coming iteration.

If the European model is a failure, then it should be allowed to fail every bit as much a the Russian model is being allowed to fail. Granted there is that little Muslim problem they’re having, but it seems to me that we need to be focusing on Canada’s little Muslim problem first, and secondly, on Mexico’s desperate determination to over-run the United States and to take enough of our wealth to send back home to keep the home enchilada’s cooking.

We should support our allies the Brits, of course, always. And on an individual basis, any of the other countries that wake up and smell the coffee beans, such as Queen Margarethe in Denmark. But to support a “Europe” entity like we would support the nation of Australia just doesn’t make sense, neither from a psychological, a social, an evolutionary, nor an economic point of view.

Because quite frankly, saving them has not worked. We have spent enormous sums of both blood and money on saving and rebuilding Europe … twice. And have been rewarded for it with smug arrogance, uninformed stupidity, and backbiting perfidy. To me, this coming time will be three strikes, and it’s time to try something different.

****

So, I understand that I am just a backwoods American hick, too unsophisticated to have an opinion on issues of such great importance as those involving the superior and enlightened beings who reside on the European continent (and a federal employee to boot [have I no shame?]), but is it possible that just maybe their is a slight chance, that in their blind arrogance, our European betters have failed to see the wolf at their doorstep?

Nah, forget it. It couldn’t happen. Forget I said anything.