Peggy Noonan's latest column...
* * *
* *
What a crisis Europe is in, with waves of migrants
reaching its shores as the Arab world implodes. It is the biggest migration
into Europe since the end of World War II and is shaping up to be its first
great and sustained challenge of the 21st century. It may in fact shape that
continent’s nature and history as surely as did World War I.
It is a humanitarian crisis.
* NOT AS FAR AS I'M CONCERNED. TO ME... IT'S AN INVASION.
(SEE: ROME, ANCIENT; FALL OF)
(*SMIRK*)
As Richard Haass of the Council on Foreign Relations
notes, it will not soon go away, for two reasons. First, the Mideast will not
be peaceful anytime soon and may well become more turbulent. Second, “The more
that Europe responds the more it will reinforce the supply of migrants. Europe
is caught.” If it doesn’t respond with compassion and generosity it is wrong in
humanitarian terms;
* SO SAYS RICHARD HAASS!
(*SNORT*)
* FOLKS... WHO YA GONNA BELIEVE - HIM OR ME?!
(*GRIN*)
...if it does, more will come and the problem grows.
“This is now part of the architecture,” says Mr. Haass.
* SO HAASS TAKES HALF THE EQUATION OFF THE TABLE AND
BASICALLY PROCLAIMS EUROPE'S ONLY CHOICE IS CULTURAL SUICIDE. UH-HUH...
Three hundred eighty-one thousand detected migrants have
arrived so far this year, up from 216,000 in all of 2014.
* BECAUSE THE EUROPEANS ARE STUPID AND ACCEPT THE
"REALITY" OF THE RICHARD HAASS' OF THE WORLD. (NOTE: TAKE AWAY THE INITIAL LAUGH... THE "HA" IN "HAASS"... AND WHAT DO YOU
GET?)
(*SNICKER*)
Almost 3,000 died on the journey or are missing.
* SO...? THE WORLD IS A HARSH PLACE. HOW MANY AMERICANS
DIE IN AUTO ACCIDENTS EACH YEAR?
(*SNORT*)
The symbol of their plight is the photo of the 3-year-old
Syrian boy, Aylan Kurdi, who drowned along with his mother and 5-year-old
brother when their boat capsized near a Turkish beach. Just as horrifying is
what was found inside a Volvo refrigerated truck stranded on the shoulder of
the A4 highway 30 miles from Vienna in late August. Inside were 71 bodies,
including a 1½-year-old girl, all dead of suffocation. They’d been left there
by human smugglers.
* LET ME GUESS; NON-IRISH, NON-ITALIAN, PROBABLY
NON-EUROPEAN SMUGGLERS.
* FOLKS... EUROPE NEEDS TO PUT A STOP TO THIS BY CLOSING
THEIR BORDERS! LET THESE PEOPLE FIGHT FOR THEIR OWN COUNTRIES' SURVIVAL AS
CIVILIZED POLITICAL UNITS! THEY SHOULD BE FIGHTING FOR THEIR FREEDOM INSTEAD OF
FLEEING!
It is a catastrophe unfolding before our eyes, and
efforts to deal with it have at least one echo in America, which we’ll examine
further down.
According to the U.N. refugee agency, 53% of the migrants
are from Syria, 14% from Afghanistan, 7% from Eritrea, and 3% each from
Pakistan, Nigeria, Iraq and Somalia. Seventy-two percent are men, only 13%
women and 15% children. Not all are fleeing war. Some are fleeing poverty. Not
all but the majority are Muslim.
The leaders of Europe have shown themselves unsure about
what to do.
* AND THIS SURPRISES ANYONE...???
(*SNORT*)
It is a continent-wide crisis that began in 2011, as
Tunisians fled to the Italian island of Lampedusa. The following year,
sub-Saharan Africans who’d migrated to Libya made for Europe after Muammar
Gadhafi’s fall.
* Er... NOTICE... PEGGY CONVENIENTLY FAILS TO NOTE THAT
IT WAS THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION - OBAMA AND THEN-SECRETARY OF STATE HILLARY
RODHAM CLINTON - WHO... AGAINST CLEARLY DEMONSTRATED CONGRESSIONAL
OPPOSITION... ENSURED THAT GADHAFI WAS TOPPLED... WITH NO ONE TO TAKE HIS
PLACE. (APPARENTLY WE LEARNED NOTHING FROM IRAQ... NOTHING...)
(*SIGH*)
Since then the European response has largely been ad hoc
and stopgap. European Union President Jean-Claude Juncker has proposed a
“permanent relocation mechanism” with EU members taking greater shares of the
refugees, but it is unclear how exactly it would work.
In many EU nations there will be powerful push-back.
* YEP! AND I'M WITH THE "PUSHER BACKERS!"
Like the crisis itself the push-back will build.
* YA THINK...?!?! (I GUESS SUCH "BRILLIANT ANALYSIS"
IS WHY PEGGY GETS PAID THE BIG BUCKS...)
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
Europe is in economic drift. As this newspaper has noted,
even Germany is growing at only 1.6% a year. Welfare systems will be strained.
Youth unemployment is already high. In Britain the crisis could contribute to a
vote to leave the EU outright.
* ONLY IF THE BRITISH PEOPLE ARE LUCKY!
(*HUGE FRIGGIN' GRIN*)
There are fears, which the elites take lightly, that
floods of displaced people will “alter the cultural balance of the country forever,”
as the columnist Melanie Phillips put it in the Times of London.
* Hmm... PERHAPS WE SHOULD BE READING MORE OF PHILLIPS
AND LESS OF NOONAN.
(*SHRUG*)
The Gulf states have not offered a home to their Arab and
Muslim cousins.
* I AM SHOCKED! SHOCKED, I TELL YOU! WHAT'S NEXT -
GAMBLING IN CASABLANCA?!
Dutch right-wing leader Geert Wilders...
(*ROLLING MY EYES*)
* OR AS I'D PUT IT, "SANE DUTCH LEADER GEERT
WILDERS..."
(*SPITTING ON THE GROUND*)
...this week called the wave of migrants an “Islamic
invasion” in parliamentary debate, “an invasion that threatens our prosperity,
our security, our culture and identity.”
* AS I WAS SAYING... "SANE."
A recent poll showed 54% of Dutch voters opposed to
welcoming more than the roughly 2,000 refugees previously agreed to.
* SO 46% OF THE DUTCH ARE JUST PLAIN STUPID...??? (I
GUESS SO...)
Hungary is building a fence.
(*ENTHUSIASTIC THUMBS UP*)
Reading the popular press of Europe you see the
questions. Do we not have a right to control our borders? Isn’t the refugee
wave a security threat? ISIS is nothing if not committed to its intentions. Why
would they not be funneling jihadists onto those boats?
Many things could be done to ease the crisis. States such
as Jordan and Lebanon work hard to help refugees in neighboring countries and
need help. Humanitarian relief is needed for the internally displaced. Go after
the human smugglers, patrol the waters, take in those who are truly fleeing war
and truly desire to become a peaceful part of their new, adoptive homes.
* NOW, FOLKS... AS MANY OF YOU KNOW... EVERY YEAR RAND
PAUL GOES OVERSEAS TO PROVIDE FREE MEDICAL CARE TO THOSE WHO CAN'T AFFORD IT IN
PLACES WHERE THERE'S BARELY A HEALTHCARE INFRASTRUCTURE WORTHY OF THE NAME TO
BEGIN WITH. DO YOU THINK 'OL PEGGY HERE VOLUNTEERS HER TIME...???
(*SPITTING ON THE GROUND AGAIN*)
But here is a problem with Europe’s decision-makers, and
it connects to decision-makers in America.
Damning “the elites” is often a mindless, phony and
manipulative game.
* OH... SURE... SO SAYETH ONE OF AMERICA'S MEDIA
ELITES...
(*GUFFAW*)
Malice and delusion combine to produce the refrains: “Those
fancy people in their Georgetown cocktail parties,” “Those left-wing poseurs in
their apartments in Brussels.”
* Er... PEOPLE LIKE PEGGY NOONAN...
(*STILL LAUGHING*)
This is social resentment parading as insight, envy
posing as authenticity.
* HEY... PEGS... CHECK OUT MY VACATION PHOTOS; I DON'T DO TOO BAD!
(*LAUGHING*)
* YOU ENJOY YOUR COCKTAIL PARTIES; I'LL CRACK A BEER AND
WATCH FOOTBALL! (YOU FRIGGIN' TOOL...!)
But in this crisis talk of “the elites” is pertinent. The
gap between those who run governments and those who are governed has now grown
huge and portends nothing good.
Rules on immigration and refugees are made by safe
people.
* YEP... (SEE! WHEN SHE'S RIGHT I GIVE HER FULL CREDIT!)
These are the people who help run countries, who have
nice homes in nice neighborhoods and are protected by their status.
(*NOD*)
Those who live with the effects of immigration and asylum
law are those who are less safe, who see a less beautiful face in it because
they are daily confronted with a less beautiful reality — normal human
roughness, human tensions.
* MURDERS... RAPES... ROBBERIES...
(*SNORT*)
Decision-makers fear things like harsh words from the
writers of editorials; normal human beings fear things like street crime.
Decision-makers have the luxury of seeing life in the abstract. Normal people
feel the implications of their decisions in the particular.
* CORRECT!
(*SINCERE APPLAUSE*)
The decision-makers feel disdain for the anxieties of
normal people, and ascribe them to small-minded bigotries, often religious and
racial, and ignorant antagonisms. But normal people prize order because they
can’t buy their way out of disorder.
People in gated communities of the mind, who glide by in
Ubers, have bought their way out and are safe. Not to mention those in
government-maintained mansions who glide by in SUVs followed by security
details. Rulers can afford to see national-security threats as an abstraction —
yes, yes, we must better integrate our new populations. But the unprotected,
the vulnerable, have a right and a reason to worry.
* DAMN STRAIGHT!
Here is the challenge for people in politics: The better
you do, the higher you go, the more detached you become from real life. You use
words like “perception” a lot. But perception is not as important as reality.
(*THUMBS UP*)
The great thing in politics, the needed thing, is for
those who are raised high in terms of responsibility and authority to be yet
still, in their heads and hearts, of the people, experiencing life as a common
person on an average street.
* YES... WE... er... COMMONERS...
(*LAUGHING*)
The challenge is to carry the average street inside you.
Only then, when the street is wrong, can you persuade it to see what is right.
The biggest thing leaders don’t do now is listen. They no
longer hear the voices of common people. Or they imitate what they think it is
and it sounds backward and embarrassing. In this age we will see political
leaders, and institutions, rock, shatter and fall due to that deafness.
* TAKING THE REST OF US DOWN WITH THEM...
(*SIGH*)
