Why Europeans are Moving Right
It’s not just Sweden.
In the latest City Journal, Bruce Bawer reports that Europeans are moving in the opposite direction from that American voters took in the most recent national election:
More and more Western Europeans, recognizing the threat to their safety and way of life, have turned their backs on the establishment, which has done little or nothing to address these problems, and begun voting for parties–”some relatively new, and all considered right-wing–”that have dared to speak up about them. One measure of the dimensions of this shift: owing to the rise in gay-bashings by Muslim youths, Dutch gays–who ten years ago constituted a reliable left-wing voting bloc–now support conservative parties by a nearly two-to-one margin.
By “these problems,” Bruce means the failure of European societies to integrate the millions of Muslims who have come to the continent. The mostly liberal governments of Western Europe (including Scandinavia) “have allowed them to form self-segregating parallel societies run more or less according to sharia.” And they sustain these parallel societies, in large part, by drawing benefits from the various governments’ generous social welfare programs.
Meanwhile, gang violence has increased, with women, Jews and gays the preferred victims. As a result, voters across the continent are turning right, with voters in Denmark, France and Italy electing more conservative governments and conservative parties are gaining strength in other nations.
It’s just the failure to integrate immigrants which is pushing Europeans to the right. It’s also economics:
Western Europeans have long paid sky-high taxes for a social safety net that seems increasingly not worth the price. These taxes have slowed economic growth. Timbro’s Johnny Munkhammar noted in 2005 that Sweden, for instance, which in the first half of the twentieth century had the world’s second-highest growth rate, had since fallen to number 14, owing to enormous tax hikes.
Guess Governor Schwarzenegger didn’t see those statistics.
The European media seems to be engaged in a process they might have learned from (or taught to) their American MSM counterparts: tarring “any nonsocialist party with the fascist brush.”
To get an idea what’s going on “across the pond,” just read the whole thing which you can also find on the Wall Street Journal‘s site.
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Who knows, in a little while maybe moving to Paris will no longer be just a leftist’s fantasy or moving to Amsterdam a pot-head’s pipe dream.
Comment by Pink Elephant — April 24, 2009 @ 11:40 am - April 24, 2009
France is being led by a free market capitalist… The US President is a Marxist who wants to appease our enemies.
I don’t what universe I woke up in, but I’m pretty damn sure Spock has a goatee in it.
Comment by V the K — April 24, 2009 @ 12:10 pm - April 24, 2009
A friend of mine spent 2 years in Malmo and recalled a neighborhood (ghetto) settled mostly by Muslim immigrants. Swedish social workers and emergency personnel were intimidated, had rocks and bottles thrown at them, beaten up, vehicles vandalized, etc. each time they entered the neighborhood to respond to emergencies. These agencies were then sued by immigrant groups for not responding adequately to emergencies while Swedish police were explicitly told by politicians not to prosecute immigrants who attacked emergency personnel.
Comment by Ignatius — April 24, 2009 @ 12:20 pm - April 24, 2009
I keep hoping somebody can explain to me how taxing people to death and spending like a drunken Marxist will help the economy.
And I don’t want to be a part of a bastardized notion of “morality” that puts the feelings of a few terrorists over the safety of U.S. citizens and her military.
Comment by ThatGayConservative — April 24, 2009 @ 2:43 pm - April 24, 2009
Dan, while the EU countries are drifting right-ward in response to the problem of nutty Islamists in their midsts, the argument that our economy “beats” theirs isn’t really that accurate.
It really depends on what you are measuring and how you are measuring it. I found this article a while back from which dives in to all the different ways you can dice the comparisons. It’s a little out of date, but the writer was rather prescient in warning about the housing bubble that has recently tripped us up.
His point was
Europeans in general are more focused on the “community” while we’re focused on the individual. Both groups have organized their economies accordingly, which provides trade-offs in the long run, again, especially when tough economic times hit Both systems provide a pretty good standard of living for both groups of people.
Comment by Jody — April 24, 2009 @ 3:30 pm - April 24, 2009
I don’t know enough about the Finnish gvt to comment on that, but Finland does a fairly good job as assimilation. To qualify for unemployment and you can’t speak Finnish you are required to go to Finnish classes(which includes history and culture). You get gvt assistance for it, but it is mandatory to go if you don’t speak the language. I will be taking more classes in autumn if me and my Finn hubby are still here. He graduates next month, as well as other classes I have beeen taking on my own.
Finland is one of the more conservative EU countries, but still it’s health care, especially in drug choices are limited, and long waits to see specialists, and dentists. I have my own horror stories to tell about that. I miss my HMO I had in America so much, and I am so homesick.
Comment by Pamela — April 24, 2009 @ 4:00 pm - April 24, 2009
An excellent article. It should be read by every congressman/woman, senator, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, who said undocumenteds who cross our borders are not criminals. and any other elected official who wants to grant wholesale amnesty. One small point that the article failed to mention is that for the first time since the end of WWII, in my native Italy, there are no communists holding elective office. The Roman Empire fell because of a form of socilaism, (bread and ciruses) and the cheapening of its citizenship, granting it to the barbarians on their northern border.
Watch Britain, If the tories, who as the article indicates are not the staunch conservatives that Margaret Thatcher was, take back the government, then the Republican Party will take back the government in in 2012.
Comment by Roberto — April 24, 2009 @ 4:13 pm - April 24, 2009
The failure of assimilation is not a failure of government but of the particular group. They do not want to be assimilated because they want to take over.
This is why people are reacting and moving in an opposite direction.
Giving in on basics such as Sharia law is totally foolish. Yet the left cannot seem to see what they are doing when they push the Sharia law agenda. Have a good look at the mess in Great Britain. The fool who is Archbishop of Canterbury has it so very wrong.
Comment by Aussie — April 24, 2009 @ 5:43 pm - April 24, 2009
Actually maybe we are both moving to the same point on the spectrum. The European “right” is still left by our standards. Perhaps there is some middle point where the further left Europeans and further right Americans are now converging on (somewhere in the middle perhaps).
Comment by Mr. Moderate — April 25, 2009 @ 9:43 am - April 25, 2009