Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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23 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The slow suicide of Europe , 31 May 2007
While the European Union is celebrating the 50th anniversary of its founding as an economic community, The Last Days of Europe joins a long list of books that warns of Europe's decline, like America Alone by Mark Steyn, Menace In Europe by Claire Berlinski, While Europe Slept by Bruce Bawer, Londonistan by Melanie Phillips and The Force Of Reason by the late Oriana Fallaci.
Laqueur's contribution has a resigned and melancholy feel, unlike some of the aforementioned titles. He analyses the current European identity crisis and the rising xenophobia amongst native Europeans with empathy, observing that the average European family today has fewer than 2 children as opposed to five in the 19th century. This decline of the native birthrate is contemporaneous with massive immigration from the Middle East, Africa and Asia.
The immigrant populations have high birthrates which increase social tensions since the concept of the melting pot is utterly alien to Europe. Immigrant groups have ghettoized themselves and this hostility to the host countries is breeding violence. Nowhere is this more evident than in Brussels, the seat of the EU bureaucracy.
While the threat of radical Islamism increases, Europeans are in full appeasement mode. Following Theo van Gogh's murder in 2004, certain Dutch politicians had to go into hiding. In 2005 there were the riots in France and the Danish cartoon episode, when very few public figures had the guts to defend freedom of speech. The next year the elites declined to defend the Pope's observations on reason and religion. And abroad, Europe has been made a fool of by the Iranian ayatollocracy and its nuclear ambitions.
Laqueur lucidly appraises the continent's 20th century history: how its wars, its murderous collectivist ideologies, and post World War II, its welfare statism and depressing multiculti and relativist cults have drained it of self-confidence. They might stimulate bistro dialogue over decaf lattes, but Foucault, Guattari and Deleuze are no match for the impassioned, expansionist faith of the immigrants.
The author's prescription is nothing new: he recommends stricter controls over the abuse of democratic freedoms by radical preachers and the promotion of integration, meaningful work and better education for the alienated groups. There are signs of these and some ground for hope after the latest German, Swedish and French elections, but these solutions will not work without a spiritual revival.
It is clear that Old Europe especially, is in deep trouble. The most disturbing scenario would be a repeat of the 1930s, by for example the embrace of a charismatic pan-European leader in the face of frightening crises, instead of a return to classical liberal values. Part of the problem is, Europe does not have much of a principled Right, except perhaps the libertarian parties of Scandinavia.
Oriana Fallaci likened the old Italian Right of the Risorgimento to a noble lady that committed suicide - an apt description of the senescent Christian Democrats that have accepted the tenets of welfarism. Thus the welfare state consensus has never been properly challenged except in the UK where Margaret Thatcher positively transformed the country in the 1980s. That is why British society is in a better state today.
For further information on the recent history and the current state of Europe, I recommend Eurabia by Bat Ye-or, The West's Last Chance by Tony Blankly, The West And The Rest by Roger Scruton, Our Culture, What's Left of It by Theodore Dalrymple and The Dragons Of Expectation by Robert Conquest.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A very cool analysis...and easy to read, 24 April 2008
I have to say that I had kept this book on my wish list for quite a long time before I bought and read it. There was something about the title that seemed a little sentimental and, on this most important current topic, I have a hunger for facts and cool analysis. I was not disappointed!
In a sense, Laqueur covers the same ground as Mark Steyn in America Alone, but without the jokes. This book is not as funny as Steyn but, possibly for that reason, more chilling. It is a very easy read and the analysis is very well organised. He looks at the history of European decline from further back than we might assume. He also examines the present situation in some fine detail that contributed to a more nuanced understanding of the situation regarding the EU and contemporary Islamic influence in Europe. There is a sense of amazement as to how Europe's post war leadership made such incredible assumptions as to allow the present devastating situation to arise with no discussion and certainly no vote.
Then, Laqueur goes on to making predictions. Although he clearly appreciates that a partial Western accommodation with true Islamic practice is impossible, he proposes that, in the end, this is what will happen in Europe in the middle part of the 21st century. The accommodation will happen between a native population that will have no choice and a `Westernised' Islam...perhaps even a secularised immigrant population.
I have my very grave doubts but understand the wishful thinking. This might be a recipe for a peaceful solution but I think it will be a lot more bloody (all round) than that.
An absolutely essential read. One of the best on this subject.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Light reading, light analysis and too much missing., 22 Feb 2009
The author's main thesis is that certain optimistic predictions about Europe's successful future are unrealistic because they fail to account for some serious mounting problems. These problems can be summarised as the low native birth-rate, excessive Muslim immigration to Europe, increasing opposition to European unity and the increasingly unaffordable welfare state in a Europe with ageing populations.
The author demonstrates his Jewish perspective by seeing only Muslim immigration as a threat to Europe's future. Although he correctly identifies most conflict as being of an ethnic rather than theological nature, he has next to nothing to say about immigration from the Caribbean, Sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere, indeed, he has a positive view of Latin American immigration even though immigration from all of these non-Muslim sources is leading to exactly the same kind of social welfare abuse, unemployment, street violence and ghetto formation as immigration to Europe from the Muslim world.
The author makes many assumptions he expects us to take on trust. He seems to see increasing European integration under the corrupt, globalist and anti-democratic European Union as a strength for Europe, therefore growing opposition to the European Union as a weakness. Yet all those amongst the native people of Europe fighting their civilisational decline oppose the European Union. The author supposes that the native people of Europe, will continue to appease the aggressive, antagonistic newcomers, yet even at the time of writing, clear signs of growing anger amongst the native people of Europe were becoming obvious. This makes the author's predicted outcome of a slow decline and gradual consensual synthesis of the native and foreign questionable. Is Yugoslavia's break-up a more instructive model? The author doesn't consider the possibility. He also assumes that population ageing makes the necessity of immigration unquestionable. How improving technology will effect the economics of caring for an ageing population isn't considered, neither how gradual population decline could lower the cost of living for example by making accommodation cheaper.
Yet another serious failing of the book is that although it contains a bibliography, it contains no references. This makes the few facts and statistics offered unverifiable and therefore worthless.
Overall, I was disappointed. It's a light, easy read but there's plenty of common sense but very little analysis, very little substantiation of arguments, very little in the way of hard information. There's nothing that's not said better by Pat Buchanan, Sam Huntington and a host of writers specialising in Muslim immigration to Europe. Most of all, the book is hopelessly defeatist.
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