St. Maximos' Hut

Mark Steyn has some insightful observations on the changing demographics of Europe. After a hilarious and devastating analysis of trends in Scotland, he ties it to the larger picture in Europe:

The other day Esko Aho - oh, come on, you remember, the former Finnish prime minister - presented a report to the European Commission that, in essence, read like a three-year-old Steyn column with an expenses budget: successful companies are abandoning the EU because it is becoming an irrelevant, sclerotic, statist backwater, etc.

Europe, says Mr Aho, is "living a moderately comfortable life on slowly declining capital. This society, averse to risk and reluctant to change, is in itself alarming, but it is also unsustainable in the face of rising competition from other parts of the world. For many citizens without work or in less-favoured regions, even the claim to comfort is untrue."

That is the point. On the present course, everywhere will wind up like Scotland. Mrs Thatcher liked to say that "the facts of life are conservative". Having declined to endorse that proposition in the Eighties, the Scots will be learning it far more painfully in the years ahead.

Steyn doesn't discuss it directly in this column, although I think recall him talking about it elsewhere, but this seems like a direct result of the emptiness of European secularism.

On a related note, Prof. Daniel Chirot of the University of Washington's Henry M. Jackson School gave a faculty talk here today and mentioned afterwards that some folks are predicting a revival of European Christianity in response to the combination of Europe's problems and Muslim immigration.