“The same
factors that are destroying Europe are at work in the United States, but their
downfall can once again be our opportunity to arise.”
From the
Atlantic to the former Soviet empire’s borders, from North Cape to the
Mediterranean, the past half-century’s political order is ending. The outward
signs are unmistakable. The U.S. establishment views them as problems
manageable by redoubled U.S. efforts to preserve
something like the status quo.
But the Old
Europe of the past half-century was unsustainable, and its problems transcend
day-to-day political choices, much less foreign policy. Its ruling class,
adrift on events, lacks a civilizational anchor. At best, American
statesmanship can lessen the consequences to ourselves of Europe’s decay—above
all, by not imitating it. The former Soviet empire’s European domains, whose
people long for a long-lost Europe, are in a different category.
Dramatic events
divert our attention from the roots that make Old Europe’s problems
intractable. In short, countries such as France, Germany, Italy, even Great
Britain, that we had imagined to be fixtures of nature, are ceasing to command
allegiance for collective action of the peoples who live within their borders.
For practical purposes, they are ceasing to exist………..
(Full
text at link below)
Invite Yearning
Europeans Here
But Europe’s
socio-political implosion is significant for America’s own internal well-being.
Millions of Europeans now find themselves in an environment that precludes
their talents’ development and that no longer satisfies their moral needs. More
and more, especially the young and talented, seek to move.
Millions
of Europeans now find themselves in an environment that precludes their
talents’ development and that no longer satisfies their moral needs.
Between 1620 and
1965, tens of millions of such Europeans made the United States of America what
it is. With apology to Emma Lazarus, these (though often poor) were not
“tired,” much less “wretched refuse.” Rather, they were the Old World’s live
wires, the ones most eager to work, to learn, and to embrace what it meant to
become Americans. Now, as Old Europe deteriorates, the number of European
would-be Americans is sure to multiply. They represent a bounty of talent, of
allegiance and refreshment of America’s cultural roots such as we have not
enjoyed for a half-century.
Whether
we take advantage of it depends on how well we understand what Europe is doing
to itself, and on how serious we are about not inflicting the same fate on
ourselves. In recent years, Americans have begun to realize that, in fact, our
own ruling class tries as best it can to follow the same socio-economic course
as does Old Europe’s. Limited by America’s circumstances, our ruling class also
has sought out the same kinds of migrants that now threaten to swamp Europe
while reducing the number of traditional European immigrants to near zero.
Welcoming
the refugees from Old Europe’s implosion would mean recognizing that the reason
they want to leave is that the Euro-American ruling class’s idea of the good
life—private as well as public—is dysfunctional. It would mean that the
American people are determined to hold fast to the peculiarly American ways by
which we have thrived since the nation’s founding.
