Lax Europa

Steyn does a pre-mortem on Europe. 

"Once large numbers of people acquire the habits of a leisured class, there are not many easy ways back to reality." [...]   

A land of 30-year-old students and 50-year-old retirees has so thoroughly diverted the great stream of life that it barely comprehends what's at stake. "Europe" as a geopolitical rather than geographical concept has been for half a century the most conventional of conventional wisdom. Those, like Britain's Euroskeptics, who dissented from it were derided as "swivel-eyed" "loony tunes." The loons were right, and the smart set — the political class, the universities, the BBC, Le Monde — were wrong. "Europe" was a blueprint for sclerosis and decline, and then a sudden, devastating fall..