"A Berlin airlift of cheap generic Viagra mightalso be useful."

"If you treat grown-ups like children they’ll behave like children," says Mark Steyn in that superb email interview with John Hawkins of Right Wing News blogged here earlier:

I'd say the Cold War in the end caused many of the irreconcilable differences [between us and the Europeans]. By guaranteeing the Continent's security, the US liberated most of Western Europe from the core responsibilities of nationhood . . . It's essentially the American taxpayer, for example, who pays for European government health care, by assuming the defence costs for Germany, Belgium and so forth.

The utopian welfarism of Europe has so corroded the basic impulses necessary for societal survival -- ie, breeding -- that I doubt anything can be done.

How come Europe's mainly secular while we, as a nation, are a melting pot of religious believers of every stripe?

The short answer is separation of church and state . . . The dynamism of American faith exemplifies the virtues of the broader society: the US has a free market in religion, Europe had cosseted overregulated monopolies and cartels. The other salient point is that obviously Europe does have a religion: radical secularism. The era of the state church has been replaced by an age in which the state itself is the church. European progressives still don't get this: they think the idea of a religion telling you how to live your life is primitive, but the government regulating every aspect of it is somehow advanced and enlightened.

"A Berlin airlift of cheap generic Viagra might also be useful," Steyn notes re declining birthrates among native Europeans:

On the basic problem of their deathbed demographics, a reader of mine, Jim Ellinthorpe, thinks President Bush should give speeches mocking the virility of European men. I'm all in favor of this, though mainly on entertainment grounds.

"Are we seeing a reverse domino effect in the Middle-East caused by the invasion in Iraq?" asks Hawkins:

Yes. The key moment in the Iraqi situation was a couple of hours into the Arab networks' election day coverage: they ran out of snide cracks to make about the American occupation, the stooge politicians, etc., and suddenly fell silent as images of four generations of Iraqi families walking to the polls to vote filled the screens. Those images had a profound impact throughout the region . . . although there will be many terrible individual atrocities in the days ahead, there’s no strategic purpose to them other than to drive a weak-willed US Congress into cutting and running. My bet is that enough of the American people are made of sterner stuff, and that Democrats who continue to argue for retreat -- and thus defeat -- will find the anti-Iraq drum has less and less resonance.

How're we doing in Iraq?

There’ll be other changes with the Iraqis in the driving seat, rather than a Bush Administration that has to keep one eye out on whether Dick Durbin’s going to blubber all over the Senate floor again. Baghdad is likely to be far less squeamish about its enemies than Washington is. I don't just mean in the sense of that TV show they have over there, the one where they broadcast the interrogations of captured insurgents, which is the only reality TV show I enjoy watching. I'm also thinking of the Syrian border, where Iraqi troops are much more likely to exercise their right of hot pursuit than the Americans are. This time next year, it could be Iraq destabilizing Syria rather than the other way around.

"Wonder where he catches that Iraqi reality show? We've been wanting to watch it ourselves, and we NEVER watch reality shows at home.

Comments

[goomp]

The "Intellectual Morons" who think they are liberals are indeed part of a degenerate and dying society. Old Europe can only be saved if the new birth of freedom exhibited in Iraq moves on to Europe and also spreads in the Muslim world.

[TigerHawk]

The Sunnis of Iraq are in a terrible bind. On the one hand, they want the United States out, or so they say. On the other hand, if we leave our absence will force the Shiites and the Kurds to play serious hardball. I'm guessing that a lot more Sunnis die if we leave than if we stay.

The Sunni leadership is beginning to understand this, but they have two problems. First, the insurgency is their only bargaining chip, so they are reluctant to shut it down until they see what kind of deal they can get politically. Second, they are probably losing control of the insurgency, at least to some degree. The foreign fighters are not just going to quit because the Sunni elders decide to join the political system. However, it will be a lot easier to kill the foreign fighters if the Sunni elders make peace, because the foreigners will lose their sanctuary.