Victor Davis Hanson
American Greatness
Almost weekly in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, France, and Germany, a sensational assault committed by an illegal migrant—often enjoying some sort of state support or with prior arrests for the same crime—surfaces.
Until recently, European politicians and the media sought to either ignore such news or accuse those who clamored for tighter borders, more police protection, and stiffer penalties of being “racists” or “xenophobes.”
Until recently, that is.
Mass protests are now common in Britain against the Labour Party’s open borders policies and generous welfare entitlements for immigrants who arrive illegally and without authentic “political refugee” status.
Greek officials, also swamped by illegal immigration, now cite President Trump’s secure border policies as new models for their own.
The majority of European immigrants now come from majority-Muslim countries in the Middle East and North Africa. Yet many arrivals seem angrier at their newfound liberal hosts than at the dictatorships they fled back home.
Europe’s immigration policies will not work in a multiethnic democracy.
Too many immigrants are arriving too quickly, without sufficient diversity, language fluency, skills, or familiarity with the customs and culture of their host nations. They often enter with separatist religious and cultural values antithetical to the very place they seek refuge.
Yet, there is no European plan of civic education to assimilate immigrants and teach them the rules, laws, and culture of their hosts.
It is then no surprise that what follows is ghettoization, resentment, and loud attacks on the very nation in which they seek sanctuary, denouncing it as decadent and godless.
In the past, Europe’s anemic military budgets, reliance on borrowed money, socialism, and a once-strong economy papered over these existential challenges of illegal immigration.
Or, as left-wing former chancellor Angela Merkel once inanely said of massive illegal influxes into Germany and Europe, “Wir schaffen das” (“We can do this”).
But, of course, Merkel could not.
She offered zero plans on how to integrate, assimilate, and acculturate millions of Europe’s illegal aliens. Now, some 15 percent of Germany’s population are foreign nationals.
Unfortunately, the statist economies of high-cost Europe are stagnating.
Massive welfare outlays, coupled with a shrinking and aging native population—with a birth rate sinking below 1.4—are finally slowing economic growth.
Current German Chancellor Friedrich Merz put the dilemma bluntly: “The welfare state as we have it today can no longer be financed with what we can economically afford.”
Yet the more socialism ossifies, the more popular culture still demands free benefits that a shrinking number of taxpayers can no longer provide.
The United States is finally taking the opposite approach of cracking down on illegal immigration, deregulating the economy, and unleashing high technology to fast-track new frontiers of artificial intelligence, robotics, cryptocurrency, and genetic engineering.
Often, Europe’s best and brightest—and frustrated—are migrating to greater opportunities and freedom in the U.S., further hampering European research and development.
Europe foolishly adopted a self-defeating energy policy to achieve net-zero emissions by subsidizing inefficient wind and solar power while ignoring or shutting down far cheaper natural gas, nuclear, and coal-powered electrical generation.
Meanwhile, China, grinning like a Cheshire cat and caring little about its carbon footprint, is eagerly exporting wind and solar systems to the suicidal West.
Yet China itself is busy building about two massive coal-fired plants a month, and the largest and most environmentally disruptive hydroelectric projects in the world.
No wonder average European electricity costs are even steeper than those in failing California. European consumers often cannot afford to turn their heaters and air conditioners on, while businesses cannot compete with industries abroad that enjoy far cheaper power.
Donald Trump has declared that the 80-year postwar order is calcified and that the US will no longer run huge trading deficits with European Union nations. Instead, it will demand symmetrical tariffs, further challenging past European mercantile profitability.
The days of Europe disarming and relying on the United States for defense are also over, given that Vladimir Putin, for the third time in 15 years, invaded a neighboring country.
Yet Ukraine is not Chechnya or Georgia, but instead on the doorstep of Europe.
So in panic, a perennially delinquent NATO is not only promising to spend the required 2 percent of GDP on defense but also increasing arms budgets to 5 percent of GDP, a higher rate even than that of the US.
No one knows how Europeans will afford such massive rearmament.
To do so would require opening up their economies, adopting far more flexible and traditional energy policies, securing their borders, ending illegal immigration, pruning the welfare state, increasing their fertility rates, and dropping the DEI salad bowl while re-embracing the melting pot of integration and acculturation.
We will soon see whether Europeans can adopt such needed reforms, or find the necessary medicine worse than their current crippling continental disease.
Europe is long past the point of no return. The 20th century created a gap of mistrust between the population and the ruling class that is still wide. As long as European elites need to please the suicidal grand children of 2 disastrous wars they will not be able to do politically what needs to be done. Far easier to restrict free speech and ban dissent. They banned private gun ownership long ago
This has been forecast by Melanie Philips’ Londonistan, Bruce Bawer’s While Europe Slept, Tony Blankley’s The West’s Last Chance, Mark Steyn’s America Alone, and of course Trump who has executed the steps toward resolution. Euro-elites institute repression against citizen protest and enable foreign subversion. Cloward & Piven must be dethroned. Good Luck, Europe, you have examples in history–it will require more than condescension and complacency.
Dr. Hansen, thank you for not only describing the ailment, the affects of it and for providing the “root-cause” all in a couple of paragraphs. The first commenter failed to see all of that and unfortunately allowed his bias to negate his entire point. Sad thing about those comments are their duplicity and obvious contradiction which is something we have become accustomed to. Trump was in fact elected “by the people” and this can be proven. We also know he was elected to STOP the downward fall of America which was on the verge of going the way of Europe. With much prayer and positivity going forward, Europe will right itself and follow in America’s lead. In spite of the damage already done, by anti-American forces, anti-capitalism forces, and the cabal (for lack of a better word), we have been given the blessing of hope for the future, and you sir have been part of that blessing!
I thoroughly enjoy your work. History lessons are truly important. Our Founders reflected upon the Roman Empire as they designed our republic. Fortunately our geographic distance has helped throttle some of the immigration. We will never know what a second consecutive Trump term may have created. Playing catchup now makes the job easier.
We have better demographics than Europe and a more forceful conservative set of policies. We still must root out those who conspired to lead us toward the darkness that Europe is facing.
Victor, I have enjoyed reading your descriptions of the world’s ills for a long time, 15 years or more. What I’ve noticed is you’re much like a modern doctor of medicine, good at describing the woes and ills of the patient, but fail to see the root causes all too often. And when did your Dr actually cure anything you’re afflicted with? They treat the symptoms. Once the root cause can be determined the cure can be applied.
Start looking for the cause instead of the symptom and you will ‘see’ the answer.
What is happening in Europe, and here in the USA, is all by design. Designed by (them), (‘owners’ of this world) the power behind nearly every politician, president or congress critter ever elected. Do you really think We The People elected Trump into office? He was ‘selected’ for the role he’s playing right now. The choice was so obvious to any thinking person. His job? To pull this way and that on the fabric of our culture, just as Biden played his part, to pull this way and that. Do that with a piece of cloth and sooner or later the desired results are gotten, total breakdown of the fabric/culture.
So, who are these so-called (cabal)? I do not know their names, but their numbers are probably less than 100. Maybe as few as 30. They have set up controls through various organizations that We The People stupidly enforce for (them).
Most of the Fortune 500 CEOs claim to be of jewish heritage. They aren’t. But it’s a great place to start an investigation!
The rise of conservative parties in Europe has been building for years now, and the nationalist movements have been fun to watch. There’s a similar disconnect between average citizens and ruling elites, as here in the States.
European elites can no longer suppress the growing protests about Muslim refugees – the social benefits afforded them, their unwillingness to assimilate and the violence perpetrated upon the citizens of naive host countries.
Europeans are afraid of Putin invading more countries and are arming themselves as a deterrence. Governments now run huge annual deficits resulting in a cut of social benefits & services. Trump had to read them the riot act.
VDH, you’re the GREATEST!!!
What is going to be the real question is what will be done about France and the Uk becoming Muslim majority countries that have nuclear weapons. Two generations tops unless they come to Jesus very soon.