QotD: Europe

Question: What do you get when you take two world wars, add the two most malign ideologies of the century, throw in genocide, the collapse of religious institutions, radical secularism, a political elite sealed off from opinions it finds distasteful, spiraling social costs, deathbed demographics and growing numbers of an unassimilated immigrant population?

Answer: You get Europe in the new millennium — mired in aggressive pacifism, moral nihilism, resurgent anti-semitism and reflex anti-Americanism. And, if you want to blame all that on Bush and Cheney, you have to shut your eyes and ears to a mountain of statistical evidence. To those on the American left who find Europe more "sophisticated", you're right: it's sophisticated in the sense that a belle époque Parisian boulevardier is sophisticated — outwardly dapper and worldly, inwardly eaten away by syphilis and gonorrhea. It's only a question of how many others the clapped-out bon vivant infects before his final collapse.

Mark Steyn, "Europe Day", Steyn Online, 2006-05-09