Europe's Gloomy Prospects

An interesting review, from Yascha Mounk, at Wall Street Journal, "A Continent's Discontents."

Mounk reviews Walter Laqueur, After the Fall: The End of the European Dream and the Decline of a Continent.

And Mounk writes:

Like Mr. Laqueur, our current doomsayers are very good at portraying the scale of the threats we face. They may be vindicated sooner than we'd like. Even so, none of them have made a definitive case for all-encompassing pessimism. If the West does experience a steep loss of status, the resultant adjustments will be painful. But so long as we retain enough defensive capability to thwart outside meddling and enough economic productivity to take advantage of living and trading in a richer world, we might be able to weather our decline rather better than expected. After all, the law of comparative advantage reminds us that, because free trade allows us to profit from increased productivity elsewhere, a relative loss of standing need not mean an absolute decline of living standards.

In that sense, the embattled dream that most Europeans truly care about might not be such a bad model for Europe's—and indeed America's—future after all.

I don't think Mounk's read Mark Steyn's, After America: Get Ready for Armageddon. Europe is covered quite well there, and you can't get more pessimistic --- doom!!