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| Europe |
| Germany, Growing Desperate |
| 2023-12-12 |
[Claremont Review of Books] A lot of European governments were thrown into confusion in October when Hamas’s coordinated massacres and abductions sparked war between Israel and Palestinians in Gaza. Germany’s ruling coalition of Social Democrats, Greens, and free marketers was not among them. In early November, economics minister Robert Habeck, a leader of the Green party, issued a ten-minute video warning over the internet to German Muslim supporters of Hamas and to various homegrown leftists and rightists. In gauging its response, their country did not enjoy the luxury of relativism. "It was my grandparents’ generation," Habeck explained,who sought to destroy Jewish life in Germany. The founding of Israel...was a promise of protection to the Jews. Germany is bound to help that this promise be kept. This is a historical foundation of our republic. This kind of speech—grounded as it was in the country’s constitutional principles rather than the speaker’s sentiments and policy ambitions—is almost never given in Europe today. It was superior to almost anything else said on the continent in the aftermath of the attacks. But a constitution is only as strong as the society committed to defend it, and the consensus around Germany’s 1949 Basic Law, inspired by American federalism and introduced during Allied occupation in the wake of World War II, is eroding. ...Well before the events in Gaza, Germany was nervous over migration. Today, 24 million of Germany’s roughly 80 million people—almost 30%—are of "migrant background," and 2.7 million migrants settled in the country in 2022 alone. ...What is clear is the direction Europe wishes to go. Today Denmark, where financial support for asylum seekers is negligible and where it takes an average of 19 years for a migrant to become a citizen, gets about 2,000 asylum applications in an average year. Germany is expected to get 400,000 by the end of 2023. Denmark is the country on which virtually all European governments have announced they wish to pattern their policies. Germany is the country whose example other countries most wish to avoid. |
| Posted by:Grom the Reflective |
| #1 Ferdinand and Isabella to the courtesy phone. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2023-12-12 06:43 |