Letter to the Financial Times by a Remain voter

Sir, Your pages overflow with predictions of disaster brought on by the Brexit/Trump axis. Leaving aside the depressing and repetitive pointlessness of this mass guesswork, its underlying assumption — that things were better when People Like Us were in charge — is at best dubious, at worst delusional. Under PLU rule, we have two failed wars and the Middle East in flames, China expansionist, Europe enfeebled, America ineffective and Russia resurgent. At home, we have banking crises, stagnant median incomes, uncontrolled borders, record indebtedness, profiteering by the “professional” classes, and general social polarisation. This is the Eden from which the rude and licentious electorates have expelled us? 

Face it. We FT readers had our decades in charge and we blew it for everyone but us. Time for us to do what we’ve been telling the rest of them to do for years, and suck it up. Or go forth and earn the respect that regains power. 

Keith Craig London SW7, UK 

Dec 16, 2016

Replies here.

Two Englishmen in Aleppo

I want to know about what went on in Eastern Aleppo in the last 4 years and why the rebels didn't surrender sooner. I hope we shall know very soon. In fact, this weekend it is just starting to emerge from the fog of propaganda.

'This is a bona fide independent journalist. It seems from what he writes that people are very happy the government has won.

'This was an exchange of lives arranged between Russia, Turkey, and Iran, who all have a stake in this conflict. Why though has it taken so long to get to this point at the expense of so many ordinary Aleppans?The operation was repeated several times as slowly each enclave was emptied. It marked a historic watershed in Syria’s protracted civil war, handing President Assad a victory that was fervently celebrated by the crowds looking on. 

In government-controlled Aleppo there was little sympathy for rebel fighters who many characterise as simply “terrorists”.‘Ali’, who preferred not to give his full name, told me: “People are tired of these rebels. The people of west Aleppo have been living in horror for five years.'

This is an English parson (priest), Andrew Ashdown, who's in Aleppo and who says he visited the refugees unannounced by taxi, without a minder. Meanwhile David Miliband in New York says the regime are going from house to house killing civilians.

'The sense of relief amongst the thousands of refugees is palpable.All were keen to talk, and we interviewed several who had arrived only yesterday and today. They all said the same thing. They said that they had been living in fear. They reported that the fighters have been telling everyone that the Syrian Army would kill anyone who fled to the West, but had killed many themselves who tried to leave – men, women and children. One woman broke down in tears as she told how one of her sons was killed by the rebels a few days ago, and another kidnapped. They also killed anyone who showed signs of supporting the Government. The refugees said that the ‘rebels’ told them that only those who support them are “true Muslims”, and that everyone else are ‘infidels’ and deserve to die.

They told us they had been given very little food: that any aid that reached the area was mostly refused to them or sold at exorbitant prices. Likewise, most had been given no medical treatment. (A doctor who has been working with the refugees for weeks told me last night that in an area recently liberated, a warehouse filled with brand new internationally branded medicines had been discovered.) Most of the refugees said they had had members of their families killed by the rebels and consistently spoke of widespread murder, torture, rape and kidnap by the rebels. They said if anyone left their homes, their properties and belongings were confiscated and stolen.

One old man in a wheelchair who was being given free treatment in the Russian Field Hospital said he had been given no treatment for three years despite asking. He said: “Thank God we are free. We now have food. We can now live our lives. God bless the Syrian Army.” They all said they were glad to be out and to be free. All the refugees without exception were visibly without exception clearly profoundly relieved and happy to be free. One woman said: “This is heaven compared to what we have been living.” We asked if the Syrian Army had ill-treated anyone. They said never. One woman said: “They helped us to escape and they provide us with food and assistance.” '

What Mr. Ashdown wrote a few days ago from Aleppo was repeating what government people had told him and describing places his minders took him. This, however, is good stuff.

What news we have had from Eastern Aleppo for years was from rebel sources which were repeated by the Western media pretty uncritically. Let's see what more we find out now.

A year ago a former British ambassador to Syria said "most of the opposition" is made up of "jihadis", the 'moderate rebels' were just 'a footnote', British policy on Syria was wrong and Russia's right

Mahomet/Muhammed in hell in Bologna

I have been very busy and am terribly behind with the blog. I have not written my crystalline insights on the Romanian election result nor an account of my trip to Bologna for the Romanian holiday last week. November 30 is now a public holiday in Romania in addition to the National Day, December 1, so everyone took Friday, December 2 off.

Romania has now decreed another new public holiday next year - Tuesday, January 24. The people in charge of Romania do seem to lack common sense.

Bologna with its long colonnades, like paintings by Chirico, is lovely and reminds one of the time when Europe was civilised, but I was also reminded of what American historian Jeremy Friedman said to me when we found ourselves sharing a compartment in a night train from Bucharest to Belgrade. He said that, unlike big American and Chinese cities, all European cities seemed to him museums, except for London.

A certain number of African beggars were in the street. My instinct was to give them money but I reluctantly stopped myself doing so, because I reflected that this is a sort of invasion. Actually, not a sort of invasion, an invasion. They are not fleeing war, but poverty.

Bologna is famed in Italy for very good food more than churches, but it has some fine ones. I was saddened to think that these great churches were built for the Tridentine Mass and its predecessors and are used to celebrate a very different kind of liturgy, an almost Protestant one. We admire the buildings, but without the liturgy the buildings lack their heart.

The great sight in Bologna is not the cathedral but St. Petronius's Basilica. And the best thing in it is the Chapel of the Three Magi. 

Patrick Cockburn: The only alternative to Assad is Isis or Nusra

Click here for an interesting article in The independent by Patrick Cockburn who says

Though Putin is much demonised in the West, the enthusiasm of Western governments to get rid of Assad has ebbed steadily, as it became clear that the only alternative to him was Isis or Nusra.

Why then did Hillary Clinton say eight weeks ago that toppling Assad was her top priority? I suppose it doesn't matter now, but why is regime change British government policy?

Assad and his government are guilty of unspeakable cruelty, as is Russia, but so are Isis and Nusra. At least with Assad Christians will remain in Syria. Without the regime all will flee.

The left-wing papers today deplore Western leaders going soft on Vladimir Putin, but they do not criticise the Syrian rebels or the Saudi intervention in Yemen. 

They should deplore Theresa May, who knows almost nothing about world affairs, humiliating (symbolically emasculating) the Foreign Secretary for saying the Saudis were conducting proxy wars in Syria and Iraq. A schoolboy knows that this is true. A war is going on in Syria and Iraq between the Sunni and Shia powers, Russia backing the Shias and the US, Britain and France siding hesitantly with the Sunnis.

I am interested that Patrick Cockburn also says that the US are closely involved in the fighting to take Mosul and in helping the Kurds against Turkey.

Tea with Neagu Djuvara on my birthday

A nice birthday present was being invited to tea by Neagu Djuvara, the 100-year old Romanian historian and thinker.

I was pleased that my Romanian was good enough to understand pretty much every word he said. He welcomes Trump's election - Trump is the sort of 'primitive peasant' who is needed, 'a bull', rather than Hillary, who is 'too harmless'.

But he does not think Russia a threat to Romania - it's simply Romanians' habit to think Russia a danger. The real danger is Muslim immigration and the inevitable Muslim conquest of Europe.

He slightly offended the woman friend I brought with me, whom he seemed to enjoy, by saying she was was 'too intellectual for a woman'. She was not offended on behalf of her sex but because he might have meant she was not attractive. I saw yet again the unbridgeable chasm that separates Romanian from British thinking. 

I think he was flirting, but with 100 year-old savants it's not easy to tell.

Morally disgusting people praise Castro

Before the Castro tributes, the last time left-wingers were so funny was when Marchais, Yasser Arafat and the others welcomed the Moscow coup in 1991.

But it's not just the left. The BBC are kinder to Castro than they were to Lady Thatcher when she died:

“His critics accused him of being a dictator.”

The Lord Mayor of Dublin has opened a Book of Condolence for Fidel Castro to allow the people of Dublin to "pay their own respects", which is reminiscent of Eamonn de Valera signing the book of condolences in the German Embassy in 1945 on the death of Hitler.

Americans disapprove of it but owe their country's existence to colonialism

It's strange that Americans owe their country's existence to colonialism but are so prejudiced against it.


Other people's colonialism, that is. They have their own colonial empire. Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Alaska, various islands, Cuba and the Philippines in the past, Europe west of Russia.


All the USA east of the original 13 colonies is the result of American colonialism, I suppose. Including the lands taken from Mexico, that the Mexicans are now reoccupying.


AJP Taylor, the greatest 20th century British historian said: 

“If the Germans had succeeded in exterminating their Slav neighbors as the Anglo-Saxons in North America succeeded in exterminating the Indians, the effect would have been what it has been on the Americans: the Germans would have become advocates of brotherly love and international reconciliation."

US gets angry when Putin wants a sphere of influence in Ukraine and the near abroad but the Monroe Doctrine delimits the US's sphere of influence (to include the whole Western hemisphere). This justified the Bay of Pigs invasion, for example, and the US embargo on Cuba which continues to this day.

Note how US reacted over Suez (because of anti-colonialism) with our support over Cuba (their colony).

I am not opposed to the Bay of Pigs invasion or the British attempt to land a force of émigrés in Albania to overthrow the Communists there. (Kim Philby ensured that didn’t work.) I just note American inconsistency.

Juncker, Hollande and Corbyn praise Castro, Trump rejoices

European Commission - Statement

Statement by President Juncker on the passing away of Fidel Castro

Brussels, 26 November 2016

Fidel Castro was one of the historic figures of the past century and the embodiment of the Cuban Revolution. With the death of Fidel Castro, the world has lost a man who was a hero for many. He changed the course of his country and his influence reached far beyond. Fidel Castro remains one of the revolutionary figures of the 20th century. His legacy will be judged by history. 

I convey my condolences to the Cuban President Raúl Castro and his family and to the people of Cuba

He has not so far gone as far as Eamonn De Valera who signed the book of condolence at the German embassy on Adolf Hitler's death.  

French President Francois Hollande has mourned the loss the "towering" former Cuban leader Fidel Castro, while noting concerns over human rights under his regime.

British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn hailed Fidel Castro as a “champion of social justice”, following the announcement of the former Cuban leader’s death, admitted there were “flaws” in the revolutionary leader’s long rule over the Caribbean island, but praised him as a “huge figure of modern history”.

Mr Corbyn said: 

“Fidel Castro’s death marks the passing of a huge figure of modern history, national independence and 20th century socialism. From building a world class health and education system, to Cuba’s record of international solidarity abroad, Castro’s achievements were many.For all his flaws, Castro’s support for Angola played a crucial role in bringing an end to Apartheid in South Africa, and he will be remembered both as an internationalist and a champion of social justice.”

President Barack Obama said: 

“We know that this moment fills Cubans — in Cuba and in the United States — with powerful emotions, recalling the countless ways in which Fidel Castro altered the course of individual lives, families, and of the Cuban nation. History will record and judge the enormous impact of this singular figure on the people and world around him.”

The BBC praised Castro's health care programme and role in fighting the apartheid South African regime, without mentioning mass murder, political prisoners or Cubans celebrating his death. Welfare has taken the place of freedom (and religion) in the minds of many people.

In fact South Africans of all races can be grateful that the National Party regime held on long enough to save them from Castro-style communism.

I don't recall Pinochet getting this treatment and yet Pinochet, not more brutal than Castro, was the saviour of his country and made it the prosperous First World economy it is today. He also stepped down after losing a referendum.

And Donald Trump called Castro a "brutal dictator".

A Facebook friend commented: You know what? I think Donny's going to work out just fine.

Donald Trump also said:

"While Cuba remains a totalitarian island, it is my hope that today marks a move away from the horrors endured for too long, and toward a future in which the wonderful Cuban people finally live in the freedom they so richly deserve,"

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump  4 hours ago

3 hours ago

Fidel Castro is dead!

0 replies50,484 retweets85,323 likes

The purpose of a nation is to exclude people

The purpose of a nation, like any other club, or like any house or dwelling, is to exclude people. This is its raison d'être. Discuss.

Excluding others is one important purpose of states, rather than countries, I suppose. I am not sure countries or nations should have purposes. I rather think they shouldn't.

Donald Trump: Like the Roman

I heard Tom Holland, the ancient historian who went to my college, talking interestingly on the BBC about the things Donald Trump has in common with Caligula and Nero. 

It caught my attention because I made a similar point in this blog recently, though I compared Mr Trump with the later Roman emperors of the years of decline, when defending the borders was a problem. I said,

I increasingly feel that we may be living in a period like the reign of Marcus Aurelius, the golden age where Gibbon starts his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Come to think of it, there is something of an outlandish late Roman emperor about Donald Trump, perhaps a rich wheat importer who got his position in an auction held by the Praetorian guard. 

One can imagine Melania in Ancient Rome too, reclining on a lectus, something that resembled a chaise longue.

I think Trump's victory is good news for America and Europe

Reality is not always probable, or likely. Jorge Luis Borges 

It's true Trump's win has sparked an increase in racist rhetoric, but we can hope this vilification of white voters will eventually abate. Ann Coulter

I stopped supporting him after the groping allegations. I was more or less neutral before the result but influenced by Rod Liddle who told me Trump was probably the lesser evil by a whisker. Watching in the early hours of Wednesday, I found myself delighted when he won so many states he wasn't supposed to have a chance in. I now think he will be good. After all, he has defied expectations all along.


He has proved to be a remarkably good politician and a salesman of genius who likes to win. He has achieved something huge by overcoming both the two parties, the Clinton machine, the Bush machine, the religious right and the bipartisan establishment. Now he may get to sideline the climate change industry and institute a rational immigration policy.


I think he'll choose good people and astonish the world by his reasonableness, though I fear he may be too reasonable.


This is the first time an obviously unpleasant man has won a presidential election since ...when?


Johnson maybe (before my time) but he got in because of Kennedy's murder. Nixon though crooked was not so repellent as Trump. Before that the 19th century I suppose.


Hillary of course was even more unlikable.


People who have had business dealings with Trump testify to how unpleasant he is, though he is said to be charming at dinner parties. But the coarseness he displayed throughout he campaign was I suddenly see a brilliant act to appeal to the voters he wanted and to provide endless free advertising.


And he addressed a sassy feminist journalist at a press conference as 'beautiful'. This might be the end of PC. And only someone as uninhibited and unafraid of causing offence as he (can't think of such a person offhand) could end PC.


What I like is that he won despite a chaotic and amateur campaign and hopeless organisation. This meant his movement was a people's revolt.


And he is the nearest to a Pat Buchanan that we can hope for.


It was a remarkable victory and a landslide even though he lost narrowly the popular vote. Had the electoral college not existed the campaign would have been fought in another way, Never Trump voters who lived in safe blue states would have voted for him and he would still have won.


The big question - have the Northern non-graduates left the Democrats for good as the Southerners had by 1980?


It's interesting that the Republican candidates for the nomination had to make a pledge to support the nominee (devised because it was feared Trump might run as a third party candidate). Bush and for some time Cruz refused to honour this.


People said that Trump would refuse to accept the result and now some Democrats are asking the Electoral College to vote in Hillary. The wheel of fortune turns.


What clinched victory? The FBI reopening the email case, Obamacare subs going up 25%, Black Lives Matter, Hillary's 'deplorables' remark, her pantsuits? I suspect that the two most important reasons, even though America is inward looking, may have been Angela Merkel's decision to enable an invasion of Europe by asylum seekers and the ISIS atrocities.

Brexit and Trump are very different, but both show that the left's and centre left's irrational attachment to open borders may keep them out of power for the foreseeable future. However, I am not sure they are capable of changing.

Why Aren't I 50 Points Ahead You Might Ask?

"Reality is not always probable, or likely." - Jorge Luis Borges

I was more or less neutral  before the result but influenced by Rod Liddle, who told me on Tuesday evening that Trump was probably the lesser evil by a whisker. Watching in the early hours of Wednesday, I found myself delighted when he won so many states he wasn't supposed to have a chance in. I now think he will be good. After all, he has defied expectations all along.

He has proved to be a remarkably good politician and a salesman of genius who likes to win. He has achieved something huge by both both the two parties, the Clinton machine, the Bush machine, the religious right and the bipartisan establishment. Now he may get sideline the climate change industry and institute a rational immigration policy.

I think he'll choose good people and astonish the world by his reasonableness, though I fear he may be too reasonable.

This is the first time an obviously unpleasant man has won a presidential election since ...when?

Johnson maybe (before my time) but he got in because of Kennedy's murder. Nixon though crooked was not so repellent as Trump. Before that, the 19th century I suppose.

Hillary of course was even more unlikable.

People who have had business dealings with Trump testify to how unpleasant he is though he is said to be charming at dinner parties.But the coarseness he displayed throughout he campaign was I suddenly see a brilliant act to appeal to the voters he wanted and to provide endless free advertising.

And he addressed a sassy feminist journalist at a press conference as 'beautiful'. This might be the end of PC. And only someone as uninhibited and unafraid of causing offence as he (can't think of such a person offhand) could end PC.

What I like is that he won despite a chaotic and amateur campaign and hopeless organisation. This meant his movement was a people's revolt.

And he is the nearest to a Pat Buchanan that we can hope for.

It was a remarkable victory and a landslide even though he lost narrowly the popular vote. Had the electoral college not existed the campaign would have been fought in another way, Never trump voters who lived in safe blue states would have voted for him and he would still have won.

The big question - have the Northern non-graduates left the Democrats for good as the Southerners had by 1980?

It's interesting that the Republican candidates for the nomination had to make a pledge to support the nominee (devised because it was feared Trump might run as a third party candidate. Bush and for some time Cruz refused to honour this. People said that trump would refuse to accept the result and now some Democrats are asking the Electoral College to vote in Hillary. The wheel of fortune turns.

What clinched victory? The FBI reopening the email case, Obamacare subs going up 25%, Black Lives Matter, Hillary's 'deplorables' remark, her pantsuits? I suspect that the two reasons, even though America is inward looking, may have been Angela Merkel's decision to enable an invasion of Europe by asylum seekers and the ISIS atrocities.

Brexit and Trump are very different, but both show that the left's and centre left's irrational attachment to open borders may keep them out of power for the foreseeable future. However, I am not sure they are capable of changing.

I think Trump's victory is good news for America and Europe

Reality is not always probable, or likely. Jorge Luis Borges 

It's true Trump's win has sparked an increase in racist rhetoric, but we can hope this vilification of white voters will eventually abate. Ann Coulter

I stopped supporting him after the groping allegations. I was more or less neutral before the result but influenced by Rod Liddle who told me Trump was probably the lesser evil by a whisker. Watching in the early hours of Wednesday, I found myself delighted when he won so many states he wasn't supposed to have a chance in. I had assumed Hillary Clinton would win yet when results came in they seemed oddly unsurprising. I now think he will be good. After all, he has defied expectations all along.


He has proved to be a remarkably good politician and a salesman of genius, who likes to win. He has achieved something huge by overcoming both the two parties, the Clinton machine, the Bush machine, the religious right and the bipartisan establishment. Now he may get to sideline the climate change industry and institute a rational immigration policy.


I think he'll choose good people and astonish the world by his reasonableness, though I fear he may be too reasonable.


This is the first time an obviously unpleasant man has won a presidential election since ...when?


Johnson maybe (before my time) but he got in because of Kennedy's murder. Nixon though crooked was not so repellent as Trump. Before that the 19th century I suppose.


Hillary of course was even more unlikable.


People who have had business dealings with Trump testify to how unpleasant he is, though he is said to be charming at dinner parties. But the coarseness he displayed throughout he campaign was, I suddenly see, a brilliant act to appeal to the voters he wanted and to provide endless free advertising.

The view from India: 'Trump's victory and Brexit are the West girding its loins to face off the Wahhabi threat'

Here is a very interesting Indian view of Donald Trump's victory.

Under a Trump presidency, expect a profound rearrangement of the world order. This is Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations playing out. First it was Brexit, for essentially the same reasons. Now it’s Trump. The West is girding its loins to face off the Wahhabi threat that has arisen. It has no patience for a hoity-toity liberal elite that only gets in the way and compromises the West’s economic and social vitality. Americans are ready to put America first. That’s why Trump won.

Facebook fascinatingly shows you how the liberal elite think. An example is this comment left just now on someone's wall:

We had the demented moral relativism of the left making excuses for 9/11 and other such acts of terror, now we're seeing the demented moral relativism of the right defending Trump. This will show a lot of hypocrites up at least, there will be plenty who make excuses for one and not the other. We should come up with a name for them...

Find an equivalence between defending Mr. Trump and murdering 3,000 people and then complain about demented moral relativism. Isn't it wonderful? And people like that think Trump supporters are stupid.

And don't understand why the Donald was elected.

Someone else on Facebook yesterday opined:

This is the worst day in the entire history of the nation; worse than Pearl Harbor, worse than 9-11, worse than JFK's assassination.

How painful the next four years are going to be for these people, whether President Trump succeeds, as we must hope, or fails.  

Another reason Trump won

A lot of the craziness comes from cultural/ethnic issues—rural White Americans who feel they are losing their country, and they are right. They are losing their country. In the end, the power they now have will go away, but it’s a very difficult and dangerous time until then. 

That was the annoying Nobel prize winner and political polemicist Paul Krugman, in 2014. 

Professor Krugman, nevertheless, was shocked by the election result and took it hard. He tweeted:

I truly thought I knew my country better than it turns out I did. I have warned that we could become a failed state, but didn't realize 1

that it wasn't just the radicalism of the GOP, but deep hatred in a large segment of the population. How do we move forward? 2/

This tweet elicited the reply:

Yeah it's almost like when you deliberately try to destroy an entire group of people, they get mad.

1. 
   

The phrase "épater les bourgeois" might have been invented for this moment

Social media on Trump



Ann Coulter ‏@AnnCoulter 14 Nov 2015
They can wait if they like until next November for the actual balloting, but Donald Trump was elected president tonight.



'This is like Brexit in at least this respect: The morning after, lots of people will be staring into their coffee and wondering how screaming insults at people didn't win them over.'



John Rentoul tweeted:
My fellow members of the metropolitan liberal elite: let's stop insulting the US electorate and try to work out why, shall we?

Latin American Trump

Ironically, Trump seems like he will be a rather Latin American leader. A populist in the Morales mould.

Why Trump won

I am tired after only three hours' sleep last night but instead of blogging give you this from a very interesting article by Scott McConnell in 'The American Conservative'. The whole piece is here.

On some issues, establishment liberal opinion had moved so far to the left as to be unrecognizable. As blogger Steve Sailer noted, in 2000 the New York Times editorial page opposed amnesty for illegal aliens both because it would encourage more illegal immigration and because it would have deleterious effects on the employment and wages of lower-income native-born Americans. Sixteen years later, when Trump suggested that the core of immigration policy should be concern for its impact on the well-being of Americans, he was denounced as a raving bigot by the same New York Times...............

There is, of course, much racism in American history, and there are enormous crimes for which Europe continues to strive to atone. But neither anti-racism nor respect for other cultures should be turned into a national or civilizational suicide pact. Here what Irving Kristol famously wrote about Sen. Joseph McCarthy comes to mind: “There is one thing that the American people know about Senator McCarthy: he like them is unequivocally anti-Communist. About the spokesmen for American liberalism, they feel they know no such thing.”

In the now global faceoff between Western civilization versus mass immigration fused with multiculturalism, Kristol’s words describe with uncanny accuracy the dichotomy between Donald Trump and his supporters on one hand and those most feverishly denouncing him on the other. Among the former, for all their faults, are those who want, unequivocally, Western civilization to survive. About the latter, no such thing is certain.

Revolutions bring odd people like Trump to power

NC called for Trump. It does look like he will win. What a revolutionary year 2016 is like 1989 and 1789.

Trump is a demagogue and unknown quality but this is a non violent revolution. Revolutions bring odd people to power. Demographics probably made this the last time something like this could happen. I suppose the 1933 election was the last comparable election but the New Deal was largely a cut and paste of Hoover's policies.

It's partly a revolt by women against feminism and whites against mass immigration. The Trump voters don't think Trump is a good candidate but he is a battering ram with which to force a citadel.

Of course Trump is not far right or even right at all but Andrew Neil compares him to Orban and the Greek communist-ish government.

Is the decadent West in terminal decline?

An article in Xinhua, the state-controlled Chinese news agency said that the US election shows 

the twisted mentality of an empire moving downhill.

That makes sense, though I think it is Europe that is in decline much more than America.

Christopher Booker in the Telegraph thinks the same. In an article headlined

It doesn't matter who wins the US election. The decadent West is in terminal decline

he says :

...Britons of the early Fifties could see the society this revolution has now brought about, with half of our children born out of wedlock, same-sex marriage, the all-pervasive cult of empty celebrity, the rise of intolerant “political correctness”, the woefully diminished standing of our politicians, our ever-rising sea of national debt, they would reel back in horror at our “decadence”.

The period since 2000 has been as dramatic as the one 1985-2000. The disastrous wars of the last fifteen years have diminished the standing of the West, while its economic dominance of the world lessens. The euro, immigrants and terrorism pose huge, insoluble problems for Europe. 

This reminds me of historians Neagu Djuvara's and Bernard Lewis's conviction that Europe's inescapable destiny is to become Muslim.

The fact that Europe, more united than at any time since the fall of Rome, feels it requires American, British and Canadian help to defend itself is very telling.

I increasingly feel that we may be living in a period like the reign of Marcus Aurelius, the golden age where Gibbon starts his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Come to think of it, there is something of an outlandish late Roman emperor about Donald Trump, perhaps a rich wheat importer who got his position in an auction held by the Praetorian guard. 

As Goldsmith put it,

Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay.

Europe has been in relative decline since the late 19th century and no longer enjoys the ascendancy that it once did, measured in all ways, over the rest of the world. Clearly this process is continuing. On the other hand, Europeans are enjoying in many ways a golden age, as are most parts of the world, measured not only in material but in many other terms.

But think how few great men Europe (and the West in general) has produced since 1945, outside the spheres of technology, medicine and hard science. Who are the great writers, painters, composers, philosophers?

Christianity is flourishing in Africa, China and Korea, but Islam is flourishing in Europe. Europe is flourishing vicariously in the former British colonies of the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, but they are becoming much less European, less Christian and more multicultural. The old order changeth.