Bryan Caplan and Mark Steyn are betting. First, Caplan:
Here’s an especially specific claim in Mark Steyn’s America Alone:
The U.S. government’s National Intelligence Council is predicting that the EU will collapse by 2020. I think that’s a rather cautious estimate myself. Ever since September 11, I’ve been gloomily predicting that within the next couple of election cycles the internal contradictions of the EU will manifest themselves in the usual way.
I smell a bet. I propose the following terms to Steyn (or up to any three other people):
If any current EU member with a population over 10 million people in 2007 officially withdraws from the EU before January 1, 2020, I will pay you $100. Otherwise, you owe me $100.
Steyn accepted:
Throwing caution and my children’s college fees to the wind, I’ve recklessly taken [Caplan’s] bet . . . . Hey, why not make it a grand? A hundred bucks’ll barely buy you a falafel at the Tour d’Argent in the Paris of 2020.
I’m inclined to side with Steyn on this one. The EU usually loses whenever it faces actual voters in a referendum.
What I expect to happen is that states will start ignoring EU dictates, and eventually someone will decide that dealing with a super-nanny-state isn’t worth the effort, and will withdraw. If I had to guess which nation would be contrary enough to pull out, I’d say Italy.
Hubbard posted this at 6:39 PM EDT on Saturday, April 26th, 2008 as Europa Universalis, I have seen the future. . .
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Yay!
ROME (AP) — Silvio Berlusconi and his conservative allies are quickly getting to work on lining up their team for Italy’s next government.
The billionaire media mogul triumphed in the country’s parliamentary elections and set him on what is expected to be a rapid path to his third premiership.
Helping Berlusconi on Tuesday to line up his government team are his right-wing allies, including an anti-immigrant party and a former neo-fascist grouping.
The ballots of Italian voters overseas still need to be counted. They could widen Berlusconi’s majority in Parliament.
Edit: “Yay” is just an exclamation, not Italian. I probably should have written “Vittoria!” or something.
Tom posted this at 12:50 PM EDT on Wednesday, April 16th, 2008 as Europa Universalis
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The Bourgeois Nerd has pointed me towards two images about books that disturbed me, though in different ways.
First, there’s this from the former Soviet Union:
I think, in that one picture, is an explanation for why Russia and most of its satellite states are collapsing. A book, frequently someone’s life work, should be treated with more respect. Books that are well taken care of are a necessary but not sufficient sign of civilization.
Respect for books alone is not sufficient for civilization because it is also possible for books to be treated with too much respect, as it were, and this leads to the second thing that bothered me. In Holland, they’ve turned a 13th century Domincan monastery into a book store. From Jonathan Glancey’s article:
But the Maastricht bookshop is Merkx + Girod’s finest work. And its transformation is, I think, a lesson to us all. Yes, we need to think up new uses for old churches, but we must also consider ways of converting them without altering their venerable fabric. A church is a prayer set in stone, and even if we do not use them as they were intended, their very presence is reassuring and comforting, reminding us that there is more to life than getting and spending, trade and toil. The Dominican church in Maastricht strikes just the right note. Its architects deserve a blessing.
It is peculiarly fitting that this abandonded church is in Maastricht, where they signed the treaty that lead to the Euro and started the road towards Europe’s godless constitution. I seem to recall Christ chasing money-changers out of the temple; one wonders what he would make of chic espresso machines replacing the liturgy of the hours.
Hilaire Belloc once argued, “Europe will return to the Faith, or she will perish. The Faith is Europe. And Europe is the Faith.” In Russia, they desecrate books; in Holland, a bookstore desecrates a monastery. Something is perishing, and the out of place books are only a symptom.
Hubbard posted this at 8:45 AM EDT on Thursday, April 10th, 2008 as Europa Universalis, Excruciatingly Correct Behavior, I don't know--but it's a Tradition
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Peter Hitchens on a disturbing trend in Britain that I hope never comes here:
At what point does taxation become theft and the state a burglar? I think we may have passed it, in which case this country has not long to go.
Last week, we learned that 50,000 criminal drug abusers are claiming “incapacity benefit” — and no doubt a lot of other benefits on top, presumably including exemption from council tax.
They get the benefits because they commit the crime of illegal drug possession.
This is a wilful and voluntary act and however much they whine about so-called “addiction”, they have a choice, and picked the wrong and selfish path.
It is a defiance of the known laws of the land. And we reward them with pensions as if they had fought for their country, when all they’ve done is shame it, and all we owe them is a narrow cell and a bowl of porridge.
Worse, in a way, is the fact that the inadequate wages and pensions of postmen, school-dinner ladies and retired soldiers are plundered by the taxman and the town hall to keep these people idle in their squalid nests, where they no doubt bring misery to neighbours and to the thousands of children said (terrifyingly) to be in their care.
How did this happen? Who devised the regulations? Will anything bad happen to them?
When did we, as a people, sign this national suicide pact that rewards disgusting irresponsibility and punishes everyone else?
Of course, some of the rest of his rant (about school children and the teaching of the Spanish Armada) is happening here. Ugh.
Hubbard posted this at 10:58 AM EST on Tuesday, March 4th, 2008 as Europa Universalis, Lord, What Fools These Mortals Be!, It's Economics - Stupid!
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You have GOT to be kidding me:
The Archbishop of Canterbury has today said that the adoption of Islamic Sharia law in the UK is “unavoidable” and that it would help maintain social cohesion.
Rowan Williams told BBC Radio 4’s World At One that the UK has to “face up to the fact” that some of its citizens do not relate to the British legal system.
He says that Muslims could choose to have marital disputes or financial matters dealt with in a Sharia court. He added Muslims should not have to choose between “the stark alternatives of cultural loyalty or state loyalty”.
Dr Williams said there was a place for finding a “constructive accommodation” in areas such as marriage - allowing Muslim women to avoid Western divorce proceedings.
Hey, I’ve got a brilliant idea. If Muslims don’t relate to the British legal system, GET THE FRACK OUT OF BRITAIN. Why the HELL should we bend over backwards to accommodate a 12th century legal system in a modern western country? Leftists like Dr. Williams always tell us that we should be accepting of other cultures - well that door goes both ways.
If you want to live in the west and enjoy all the freedom and prosperity it provides you should live by our rules. If you want to live under sharia law - move to Saudi Arabia or Iran.
Jamie posted this at 5:40 PM EST on Thursday, February 7th, 2008 as Another Great Victory For Jihad, Europa Universalis, Faith, Excruciatingly Correct Behavior
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One of the more annoying tropes I see coming from the left is the insistence that Europeans are a sort of morally superior creature to Americans. I have two theories as to the origins of this myth:
- American college students visiting Europe and hanging out with European college students, who seem so much more open-minded and progressive than the people they remember from their own hometowns
- European socialism, which tends to evoke longing sighs from a certain type of American.
What this normally ignores, of course, is the rather disturbing racial dynamics that one sees in Europe, especially in countries that have had significant amounts of immigration from the Global South. This leads me to the story that prompted this post: Can you imagine something like this crap happening in the US?
Geoff posted this at 9:59 AM EST on Monday, February 4th, 2008 as Europa Universalis, Those Wacky Foreigners, Race
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