AVIGNON, France -- The Rhone River Valley in southern France is a storybook marriage of high technology, traditional vineyards and ancestral villages. High-speed trains and well-designed toll roads, crisscross majestic cathedrals, castles and chateaus.
Traveling in a Europe at peace these days evokes both historical and literary allusions. As with the infrastructure and engineering of the late Roman Empire right before its erosion, the continent rests at its pinnacle of technological achievement.
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.
...Free speech is increasingly problematic. It is more dangerous for a European citizen to publicly object to illegal immigration than for a foreigner to enter Europe illegally.
Elites preach the idea of open borders. But people on the street concede that they have no way of assimilating millions of immigrants from the Middle East into European culture. Most come illegally, en masse, and without the education or skills to integrate successfully.
...The world quietly assumes that the rich and huge European Union cannot and will not do much about unscrupulous Chinese trade practices, radical Islamic terrorism, or Iranian and North Korean nuclear proliferation.
Such problems are left to the more uncouth Americans. That unspoken dependency might explain why many Europeans quietly concede that the hated Donald Trump's deterrent foreign policy and his economic growth protocols could prove in the long term a better deal for Europe than were the beloved Barack Obama's lead-from-behind and redistributionist agendas.
#1
"The European Union, the best idea yet from people who have a long history of bad ideas."
Posted by: ed in texas ||
06/08/2018 8:38 Comments ||
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#2
"This worked really well when other people printed out money..."
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
06/08/2018 9:15 Comments ||
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#3
our money.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
06/08/2018 9:15 Comments ||
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#4
EU works because the Germans are work-aholics wracked with guilt. Eventually one or the other will break and the lazier and more independent minded countries will peal off.
#7
POM's = British? POM isn't an acronym so I'm not sure why you capitalized it. "Pommie" meaning English person comes from an Australian context meaning immigrant from England, not the UK. Are you Australian? Moreover using the possessive seems incorrect in this context.
Britain gets a pass because they're not part of the EU and they're one of the few allies that
pulls their fair share of the load. The rest of them can go to the Devil, the ungrateful freeloaders.
Posted by: Herb McCoy ||
06/08/2018 12:43 Comments ||
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#8
Yes they exist because of US security guarantees but that's not the point.
If they didn't have the German economic engine the thing would have collapsed long ago security guarantees or not. Depending upon the Germans sucking it up and taking it forever doesn't seem a wise plan.
h/t Instapundit
One of the most ironic things about the constant "toxic masculinity" complaints that we hear these days is that we live in an overly feminized culture where most of the "toxic" males seem to have either been raised without fathers or claim to be adherents of feminism. The statistics on men raised without fathers are grim almost beyond belief.
70% of gang members, high school dropouts, teen suicides...and teen substance abusers come from single mother homes.
...80% of rapists motivated with displaced anger (Source: Criminal Justice & Behavior, Vol 14, p. 403-26, 1978.)
...85% of all youths sitting in prisons (Source: Fulton County Georgia jail populations, Texas Department of Corrections 1992)
Then there are the men from liberal Hollywood who have been at the epicenter of the #metoo earthquake. Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, Michael Douglas, James Franco, Morgan Spurlock, Matt Lauer, Charlie Rose, Russell Simmons ‐ it goes on and on and on. Truly a puzzle.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
