The Last Days of Europe: Epitaph for an Old Continent [Anglais] [Relié]

While the European Union is celebrating the 50th anniversary of its founding as an economic community, The Last Days of Europe joins a long list of books that warns of Europe's decline, like America Alone by Mark Steyn, Menace in Europe by Claire Berlinski, Londonistan by Melanie Phillips, While Europe Slept by Bruce Bawer and The Force of Reason by the late Oriana Fallaci.

Laqueur's contribution has a resigned and melancholy feel, unlike some of the aforementioned titles. He analyses the current European identity crisis and the rising xenophobia amongst native Europeans with empathy, observing that the average European family today has fewer than 2 children as opposed to five in the 19th century. This decline of the native birthrate is contemporaneous with massive immigration from the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

The immigrant populations have high birthrates which increase social tensions since the concept of the melting pot is utterly alien to Europe. Immigrant groups have ghettoized themselves and this hostility to the host countries is breeding violence. Nowhere is this more evident than in Brussels, the seat of the EU bureaucracy.

While the threat of radical Islamism increases, Europeans are in full appeasement mode. Following Theo van Gogh's murder in 2004, certain Dutch politicians like Ayaan Hirsi Ali had to go into hiding. In 2005 there were the riots in France and the Danish cartoon episode, when very few public figures had the guts to defend freedom of speech. The next year the elites declined to defend the Pope's observations on reason and religion. And abroad, Europe has been made a fool of by the Iranian ayatollocracy with its nuclear ambitions.

Laqueur lucidly appraises the continent's 20th century history: how its wars, its murderous collectivist ideologies, and post World War II, its welfare statism and depressing multiculti and relativist cults have drained it of self-confidence. They might stimulate bistro dialogue over decaf lattes, but Foucault, Guattari and Deleuze are no match for the impassioned, expansionist faith of the immigrants.

The author's prescription is nothing new: he recommends stricter controls over the abuse of democratic freedoms by radical preachers and the promotion of integration, meaningful work and better education for the alienated groups. There are signs of these and some ground for hope after the latest German, Swedish and French elections, but these solutions will not work without a spiritual revival.

It is clear that Old Europe especially, is in deep trouble. The most disturbing scenario would be a repeat of the 1930s, by for example the embrace of a charismatic pan-European leader in the face of frightening crises, instead of a return to classical liberal values. Part of the problem is, Europe does not have much of a principled Right, except perhaps the libertarian parties of Scandinavia or the Flemish nationalists.

Oriana Fallaci likened the old Italian Right of the Risorgimento to a noble lady that committed suicide - an apt description of the senescent Christian Democrats that have accepted the tenets of welfarism. Thus the welfare state consensus has never been properly challenged except in the UK where Margaret Thatcher positively transformed the country in the 1980s. That is why British society is in a better state today.

For further information on the recent history and the current state of Europe, I recommend Eurabia by Bat Ye-or, The West's Last Chance by Tony Blankly, The West and the Rest by Roger Scruton, Our Culture, What's Left of It by Theodore Dalrymple and The Dragons of Expectation by Robert Conquest.

Walter Laquer has been writing histories of Europe for a long time. He is, in fact, 86 and has written 20 or more books. "The Last Days of Europe" is an assessment of Europe now and through the remainder of the 21st Century.

Essentially Laquer suggests that Europe will become a gigantic museum with Muslims as the ticket takers. Ethnic English, French, Germans, Russians, all Europeans aren't reproducing at a rate sufficient to replenish their stocks while Muslim immigrants are not only outbreeding Europeans, but failing to integrate. The result? A largely Islamicized Europe. He is far from alone in this view. Other authors, notably Mark Steyn (America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It), Melanie Phillips (Londonistan), Bruce Bawer (While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within) and Claire Berlinski (Menace in Europe: Why the Continent's Crisis Is America's, Too) have written of a changing Europe, each from their own perspctive. Most notable is the late Orianna Fallaci's (The Force of Reason), written as she was dying and filled with fiery passion.

Laquer's view is quite interesting because unlike the authors cited above, he does not reflect first-person views, but rather sticks to the statistics and raw facts, which are frankly depressing.

Europe has failed to integrate Muslim immigrants into its societies. While some Muslims have indeed become a part of their adopted nation, most remain apart. They do not attend school. They do not learn the native language. They do not assimilate. They do hate. They do nurse and nurture discontent. They do sop up, with the all too willing help of social workers and multiculturalists, all the financial benefits they can. And they reproduce, all too often with wives brought from their countries of origin.

Increasingly these Muslim immigrants are being radicalized while their children drift off into gangs or a srange counter-culture that rejects their parent's values but doesn't adopt the values of their host nation.

Europe's economic stagnation, globlization, aging populations and the native's failure to reproduce will, according to Laquer, reduce Europe to a largely Muslim society by 2050.

This is not an optimistic book. Nor is it particularly dystopian as others have been. Rather it is a sober and fully explained assessment by a competent historian who has seen Europe's fall into the abyss of evil in the 1930s and 40s, its recovery and its missteps toward its preseent dangerous position. Laquer does not forsee the survival of Europe as we know it.

Required reading for anyone concerned with political stability in Europe and the world.

Jerry

Some pundits still proclaim that "the twenty-first century will be Europe's" (p 15).

Certainly, Europe did have an almost miraculous recovery after World War II. And uniting their countries under a common currency should be beneficial.

But all along, like a dark cloud gathering on the horizon, there have been indications that things are going seriously wrong in Europe. And chief among the problems is the decline in population. For example, "Italy counts some 57 million inhabitants at present; this is expected to shrink to 37 million at mid-century and to 15 million by 2100" (p 24-5).

The population decline is so vast it hardly seems believable. Tiny, poor Yemen will surpass Russia in population by 2050, if UN statistic projections are to be believed. Currently, Russia experiences more abortions than births. The population decline is further aggravated by a decline in mortality, caused partly by rampant alcoholism.

Two other problems are associated with the decline in population. The first is that "by 2050 one-third of the population of Europe will be sixty-five or older" (p 127). In other words, Europe will be one large daycare center for the elderly. There will be an enormous growth in health expenditures by each government, in social services and welfare benefits.

But where will the money to pay for this come from? From its tiny population? And, moreover, a population that doesn't seem to like work? Already, Germans work less than workers in any other country. The welfare state was sustainable only in a growing economy. How can you have a growing economy with few workers and a huge payout to the elderly? And yet how can you take away welfare benefits to people who need them, and, moreover, have grown to expect them? The French riot at the merest hint of cutbacks.

The second problem is with immigration. The only group in Europe that is reproducing itself is the immigrant population, chiefly Muslim. Today, in Brussels,"as of 2004 more than 55 percent of the children born were of immigrant parents" (p 15). Will Europe morph into a Muslim enclave?

Interesting questions.