Mark Steyn: The Yanks are going home

For the Americans, it doesn’t make much difference whether the Austro-Swedish or Eurabian option prevails. This is nothing to do with disagreements over Iraq:you can’t ‘mend bridges’ when the opposite bank is sinking into the river.

Another zinger.

Said ken5050:

What Steyn doesn't add is that all the third world crazies WILL chose to go to Europe, because they're subzidized by the welfare state.....

Replied jpl:

The problem with that is that the old European welfare state is on the verge of total and utter collapse, probably within the next five to ten years or so (our American welfare state is in danger in some ways itself, but the situation is not nearly as dire here). What will take place in Old Europe once that happens is uncertain at this point, but I guarantee it won't be pretty. We're on the cusp of some very interesting, and possibly frighteningly violent, times ahead of us.

The welfare stampede is self-defeating for this very reason. By sheer numbers they will destroy the institutions that are subsidizing them. I don't see how Steyn's 'Austro-Swedish' scenario can ever be realized.

'Eurabia' or some other third-world equivalent is Europe's far more likely future.

[Insert standard followup comment regarding America's potential similar future]

In 1898, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, prime minister of Queen Victoria’s great white north, declared that just "as the 19th century was the century of the United States, so shall the 20th century belong to Canada."

Laurier didn't take enough iron supplements: his government collapsed when he backed a free trade agreement with the United States in 1911. While the U.S. Congress passed the law for trade reciprocity, Laurier went before the Canadian public and got clobbered in a referendum.

Here's the irony: the high priest of Britishness himself, Kipling, intervened to declare the agreement an abrogation of all things British. By stoking fear that the deal would lead to annexation of Canada by the U.S., Laurier's opponents kicked him out of office.

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