Thank you for a brilliant footnote to a brilliant Steyn piece.
Even the Britain of which Winston Churchill; already 65 years of age before he became prime minister; spoke so eloquently hadn't existed since long before Lloyd George's time -- and the rest of Europe [Especially the seventh-century's-false-fuerher-meets-nineteenth-century-Prussia, death-and-destruction-worshipping, false-prophet-following, pagan-heathen, Nazis] already trailed far far behind Britain.
Such perceived recovery as any of them has seen since 1945 is purely material and is owed to US -- and to the more than Seventeen and a Half Trillion Dollars of Our Nation's confiscated wealth that has been squandered on them since then.
Politically, morally, intellectually and spiritually, Europe and Europeans are struggling to emulate the Soviets of 1917 -- and are failing even at that puny task!
They do try, though. The EU is already arresting
merchants who dare use avoirsdupois weight
systems rather than metric as they charge for
the fruit they sell. The EU looks to be a large
exercise is Central Planning, which as you point out,
the Soviets showed to be unworkable.