RIP and a Warning

OK, I admit that the French voter’s rebuff of President Jacques “Iraq” Chirac was a real treat. Following upon Gerhard Schroeder’s congressional defeat in Germany, the two primary European ingrate-backstabbers have received a well deserved thrashing from their own peoples. And the Franco-German vision of an EU powerhouse to rival America, economically and politically, has proven to be a socialist’s pipe dream.

The worrying thing about the European mess is that socialism is so well entrenched in the unions and the government bureaucracy that the needed Thatcher-like reforms are doomed. Instead, “European nations penalize work and subsidize non-work, and, no surprise, they have gotten a lot of the latter and far too little of the former.” When they most need labor and welfare reforms, tax cuts and deregulation, what they voted for was more socialism.

Furthermore Europe has lost the moral will as well as the military capacity to face down new threats at home and abroad to the freedoms it cherishes. And egged on by intellectual elites, Europeans are encouraged to embrace moral relativism and despise the civilization that nurtured them.

A decade ago intellectual elites in the US trumpeted the European socio-economic model and urged America to follow. Amazingly the left in America is still trying to expand the social safety net to parity with the Europeans. In Congress today there is a bill to provide virtually every social welfare benefit that Europe now offers. And the Congressional Budget Office predicts that if America's federal entitlement programs are not reined in, by 2030 government's share of the U.S. economy will close in on 50% of GDP, or even more than Europe's share today.

Warning: These liberal morons are incapable of learning from history even when it is only days old.