Europe – blessed by US deterrence with the longest period of peace in its history – loves to hector America about how much better Europe does, well, everything.
There is a Roman Empire-like sameness throughout Europe in fashion, popular culture, and government protocol — a welcome change from the deadly fault lines of 1914 and 1939.
Yet, as in the waning days of Rome, there is a growing uncertainly beneath the European calm.
The present generation has inherited the physical architecture and art of a once-great West — cathedrals, theaters, and museums. But it seems to lack the confidence that it could ever create the conditions to match, much less exceed, such achievement.
The sense of depression in Europe reminds one of novelist J. R. R. Tolkien’s description of the mythical land of Gondor in his epic fantasy The Lord of the Rings. Gondor’s huge walls, vaunted traditions, and rich history were testaments that it once served as bulwark of a humane Middle-earth.
When they were a collection of smallish, ethnically and culturally homogenous statelets, they had something going for them (other than the whole “going to war with each other every generation or more” thing).
But the thing about European cultures is, you can never “become” French, or Norwegian, or Dutch; those societies are defined by language, history and ethnicity (even polyglot Switzerland). Combine that with being in demographic death spirals (at least those countries west of the German/Polish border) and importing millions of people, first “guest workers” and later refugees to fill in the demographic gaps, workers who can never be truly assimilated into their respective societies…
…and all that placid homogeneity that allowed Swedish and Dutch and French society to actually be Swedish, Dutch, French, German, Italian, whatever, is all by the boards.
And then, the best they can hope for is to become occasionally fractious, like we do. The worst?
The same thing that always happens when one culture drowns in another.
Who will be first to use the slogan “Make the European Union Great Again”?
Even if you had the money, could the Louvre or Versailles or Notre Dame or Chartres be built today? Saint Peter’s Basilica? The Coliseum?
Environmental impact statement. Building code permits. Heritage commission regulations. Zoning variance and conditional use permits. Lawsuits to save the endangered angleworm habitat.
Joe, it’d take zealotry on a scale unimaginable in Europe today to build something like Notre Dame today. There’s no subject that injects enough passion into the intellectually and morally defeated Europeans these days, not even Global Warming.
The Europeans couldn’t really muster the courage to really defend their freedoms from external Communism (the Iron Lady excepted), so what makes you think they stand a chance defending against internal Islamism?
Joe: your comment makes me think of pretty much anywhere on the west coast, with the exception of a high speed train that will never support itself, and few will ever ride.
And in Seattle they add a Euro style Socialist head tax to the other hurdles to building something and adding jobs to the city.
To commemorate the defeat of the West in Europe, I predict a Grand Mosque in Paris to rival the Dome of the Rock. Maybe on the former site of Notre Dame.
The victorious muzzies won’t even bother to couch the significance of it; maybe there will be some infidel beheadings to commemorate the occasion. There will be blue eyes and slips of pale skin showing from under some of the burkas of the women kneeling at the feet of the victors.
By that time there won’t be anyone to complain, and we will be busy cleaning out our own house to drag Europe out of the fire again.