Socialism, Culture of entitlement, Culture of political liberalism

The Sick Man of Europe meets Islam

By Daniel Greenfield
Monday, October 5, 2009

Turkey was once known as the Sick Man of Europe because it appeared to be a failed state headed for collapse and ripe for colonization, but today it is Western Europe that appears to be sick, and Turkey’s Islamists, along with their co-religionists in the Middle East that are heading up the reverse colonization effort.

Yet it is an oversimplification to pretend that the problem began with Islam, Western Europe has been sick for some time now. Before Islam there was Communism and before Communism there was Nazism, and each time it appeared to only be a matter of time before Europe fell under the sway of one or the other.

The indecisiveness of the former great powers allowed a failed state like Germany led by a bunch of cheap thugs with a raving lunatic at its head nearly destroy them. What brought Europe to this catastrophic state of affairs was its emphasis on appeasement over defense, and even the willingness to carve up nations like Czechoslovakia rather than confront the clear and present danger of Nazi Germany. By the time they woke up, it was all but too late and only American intervention saved Europe from becoming part of the Thousand Year Reich.

But the end of WW2 demonstrated that Europe had learned no lessons from the disaster, except to once again reassert the dangers of nationalism, a fallacious idea that had led Englishmen and Frenchmen to regard their own nationalism with skepticism while giving the German and Russian varieties a pat on the head. England woke up long enough to let Churchill have his way, but then tossed him out in ‘45 as soon as things were wrapped up, to once again limp down the curving road of socialism. As is so often the case in the West, the “Stiff Upper Lipâ€